Facebook and Google (among other companies) know a lot about you through the services you use. Dylan Curran for The Guardian provides a rundown:
This information has millions of nefarious uses. You say you’re not a terrorist. Then how come you were googling Isis? Work at Google and you’re suspicious of your wife? Perfect, just look up her location and search history for the last 10 years. Manage to gain access to someone’s Google account? Perfect, you have a chronological diary of everything that person has done for the last 10 years.
This is one of the craziest things about the modern age. We would never let the government or a corporation put cameras/microphones in our homes or location trackers on us. But we just went ahead and did it ourselves because – to hell with it! – I want to watch cute dog videos.
We knew this, right? But it’s weird that it took a government-related impetus to bring privacy concerns in social media back into the light. It feels different this time.
