Today Stream of Conciousness prompt is ‘information’; something that has been on my mind lately. It is blog-worthy but a good post would require a lot of editing so I apologize in advance if I seem to be rambling….. because I am.
People and businesses are making money selling our information. Our e-mail addresses, phone numbers, street addresses and even where our car is at any given moment.
You’ve all seen those things on Facebook that lure us to answer questions such as; “Name a city without the letter ‘A’. I bet you can’t!” Well, of course thousands of people can and do type a city with the letter ‘A’.
How about “can you read this?” jumbled letters or upside down. You can? That’s amazing but so can thousands of others.
How about “Find the secret meaning of your name” or your “hippy name”. or your better qualities. Ever notice they are all good? “I’m caring and creative!” “I have the brains of a Ph.D!” No one ever gets bad things. “You are moody and impossible to live with” “Your hippy name is Skid Mark”
In March and April there was a huge push toward Air Miles from the Corporation that runs Sobeys. Foodland, IGA and others were a part of it. We wore Air Miles T-shirts (think of the millions of Air Miles T-shirts for all those employees across Canada) and pressured everyone to GET THEIR AIR MILES CARD! You get rewards! You want rewards, don’t you? I kept wondering, “What’s in it for them? Why all this money spent just to give us points?” Because now they can track you and your purchases and information is money.
How many of you got one of those things on your car that tracks every move you make and what time you do it? I got one but was reluctant to put it on. I got two e-mails saying “We don’t see you yet…. put on the tracker and save 5%!” I did it. The insurance company wants to keep track of you for your safety and information. You might save some money in the future!
The police have to have a warrant to put something on your car to track you but since we’ve allowed the insurance company to put it on, there’s no need to. They can track us through our insurance company who can sell information. They can track where you are shopping or worshipping or being entertained.
Recently I tried get off satellite TV but they got a super sales person to make me a deal I couldn’t refuse. (you should try it; they cut my costs drastically) But what scared me is that the sales person had so much information about me. She looked up my internet use….. as in how much I used my internet…… and this is a totally different corporation. I asked her how she had that information and she said “HA! you wouldn’t believe……” something along those lines.
There’s not much we can do about it. Don’t click onto things. I good tip is when you ever get questions on your income….always check off the lowest. If you are poor they can’t sell you anything.
Although I really don’t like it, I’m not too worried about it. My life is pretty boring and I’ve got nothing to hide. But its a creepy feeling to think that everything you do can be tracked. The question is “Is anyone watching?”
http://lindaghill.com/2015/06/05/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-june-615/
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