Privacy is important.
Privacy is important, but in this age of computers maintaining privacy is becoming increasingly difficult. If your naive/ignorant, you've probably given away way too much information already.
That being said, I like firefox as a web browser. Duckduck as a search engine, Privacy badger as an add on. I'm not sure how much this helps, but at least it sends a message I care about my privacy.
On the other hand, advertisements are used to pay for websites. Many advertisers use tracking cookies to help with targeted ads. In other words we have two choices.
A. The web is free of $$$, but costs privacy.
B. The web is private, but every website you go to you must pay some sort of subscription.
I'm not sure which is better, but contemporary culture definitely lean towards A. Some websites even go so far as to call me a freeloader for wanting to maintain my privacy and anonymity on the web. Would you really want to have to keep track of 30+ paid subscriptions, one for each website you visit?
What I want to see a conscious decision. For websites to elaborate on how much data they use for advertisement, and for the user to make a conscious decision on a per web page, application, or program basis.
Let's take your web browser for example, how much data does it send back? What funds those updates? With no updates, your browser would quickly become obsolete and vulnerable to malware and hackers.
So how should your browser be funded? Data mining the user, advertisement, paid subscription, donations, or some combination?
With data too often people pay for the application only later to realize how much data was collected. This is akin to walking into a coffee shop and paying for the coffee, yet having no clue how much you paid. A good example is flashlight applications data mining.
There is no such thing as a free lunch, yet it seems way too easy to data mine a bunch of data to unknowing clients who only find out after the fact. We can put an easy value on coffee, but it is a lot more difficult with the abstraction of information. Add in that is difficult to determine how much data a given website, application, or program uses and people can easily over pay.
I'm not saying the Internet should be free, just that the customer shouldn't be treated like a mushroom as to how much or how little information is being collected.
Finally, what about people who are poor? Should they be forced to pick option A, free of $$$ but no privacy. That would lead to people with money having privacy and those without having little to no privacy, like a one way mirror.
Comments are welcome, though I'm not sure how to enable comments. I do plan to moderate comments, again I'm not sure how.
That being said, I like firefox as a web browser. Duckduck as a search engine, Privacy badger as an add on. I'm not sure how much this helps, but at least it sends a message I care about my privacy.
On the other hand, advertisements are used to pay for websites. Many advertisers use tracking cookies to help with targeted ads. In other words we have two choices.
A. The web is free of $$$, but costs privacy.
B. The web is private, but every website you go to you must pay some sort of subscription.
I'm not sure which is better, but contemporary culture definitely lean towards A. Some websites even go so far as to call me a freeloader for wanting to maintain my privacy and anonymity on the web. Would you really want to have to keep track of 30+ paid subscriptions, one for each website you visit?
What I want to see a conscious decision. For websites to elaborate on how much data they use for advertisement, and for the user to make a conscious decision on a per web page, application, or program basis.
Let's take your web browser for example, how much data does it send back? What funds those updates? With no updates, your browser would quickly become obsolete and vulnerable to malware and hackers.
So how should your browser be funded? Data mining the user, advertisement, paid subscription, donations, or some combination?
With data too often people pay for the application only later to realize how much data was collected. This is akin to walking into a coffee shop and paying for the coffee, yet having no clue how much you paid. A good example is flashlight applications data mining.
There is no such thing as a free lunch, yet it seems way too easy to data mine a bunch of data to unknowing clients who only find out after the fact. We can put an easy value on coffee, but it is a lot more difficult with the abstraction of information. Add in that is difficult to determine how much data a given website, application, or program uses and people can easily over pay.
I'm not saying the Internet should be free, just that the customer shouldn't be treated like a mushroom as to how much or how little information is being collected.
Finally, what about people who are poor? Should they be forced to pick option A, free of $$$ but no privacy. That would lead to people with money having privacy and those without having little to no privacy, like a one way mirror.
Comments are welcome, though I'm not sure how to enable comments. I do plan to moderate comments, again I'm not sure how.
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