We always hear people talk about privacy on the web. But have you ever actually seen how easy it is to find private data? It continues to shock me that even with so much demand for privacy, so much our personal, private information continues to be so readily available.
If you are willing to spend a little bit of time, and sometimes a little bit of money, you can find the delicate, fine details of a person’s life. And it’s not just insignificant details like a mention in an email, or a tag in a photo. Some of the data that is available is truly private, like where your kids go to school, and how much you contributed in the last election.
Most people seem to be, or would be, pretty upset that their private information is so easily accessible online. If this majority is considered the driver of consumer preference, and markets adapt to consumer preference, why is privacy on the web still so unattainable?
The internet is an almost entirely unregulated market, and unregulated markets are shaped almost entirely by consumer preference. Yet, as a market, the internet does not seem to accurately reflect this demand. (There is certainly a significant demand for private data, but there is an even greater demand for it to be protected.)
If privacy is what we the (online) people truly want, we need to make our voices heard in order to correct this market flaw. We need to be actively engaging with the organizations and businesses that store our information and correct the market ourselves.
