Thursday, February 23, 2012

One Click Privacy Bill

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/02/23/white-house-unveils-one-click-online-privacy-plan/

The government is on board with citizens being able to browse the web without someone looking over their shoulder. This bill will essentially allow a click-able option for the user to decide if they want to be tracked or not.

The strangeness of this is that companies like Google have been doing this over the shoulder business for years. There is a saying that when someone provides you a service without charging for it, you are likely the product being sold. And that is how search engines generate revenue.

Now when say Google goes to implement this tracking option I assume it will be default set to "let us track you" so first, people who are unaware of it won't be turning it off. Second, they may be able to hide it within the options settings so that people forget to change it. But I think the biggest impact will be that people will become more apathetic about the whole thing because they know that they have an option regardless if they use it or not.

1 comment:

  1. I have never thought about it in terms of us as the product being sold! Thats a really scary thought...privacy is a really rare thing on the internet.

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