As you scrolled through your digital feed today on your favorite Social Media App, what did your finger stop and pause upon?
Was it a particular person you were connected with, who was posting a question Poll? Why this person?
Was it a specific topic of political interest with a headline that caught your attention? Why this topic?
Was it a picture of your favorite place in the city you live in? Why this picture?
Maybe
it was a combination of all, so you then took the time to do some more
research, some background, to try to satisfy a curious state of mind
that took over your thinking.
What questions did you seek answers to, in your journey to satisfy your own curiosity?
You are exactly the kind of person the state or private entity is watching and measuring.
Cookies and metadata are their tools:
Metadata
means "data about data". Although the "meta" prefix means "after" or
"beyond", it is used to mean "about" in epistemology. Metadata is
defined as the data providing information about one or more aspects of
the data; it is used to summarize basic information about data that can
make tracking and working with specific data easier.
So what?
The
person on this web page or in this rental vehicle, or this retail store
has this “name associated” with the user name or mobile device they
have carried within 5 feet of the digital sensor: John Doe’s iPhone 11.
Whether
he is on the browser visiting the web page or has the small radio
frequency (RF) device in his pocket, it is being measured. It is being correlated. It is being shared.
You
see, John/Jane Q. Public for the most part does not care. He does not
think about it. She is unaware of the implications of the ip, location
or metadata they are sharing in their own home, in public locations, or
the workplace.
With whom? The answer to this question depends…
