Gotcha?

“If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself.”
? George Orwell
1984

“We boil at different degrees.”
? Ralph Waldo Emerson

Time.com’s “Will ‘Stalking Apps’ Be Stopped?” story (February 4), written by Adam Cohen, outlined how Nissan had rigged its all-electric Leaf automobile with a GSM, cellular, Internet connection that provided telemetry information (location, speed and direction) to Nissan Corp. and possibly other websites through an RSS feed. GSM is a cellular network that wirelessly connects to the Internet by searching for cell towers in one’s immediate vicinity.
Cohen said Nissan didn’t tell Leaf buyers it was gathering the information, or was passing it on to third parties without their consent. He said Leaf owners aren’t alone — that iPhones and Android smart phones may have secretly sent Apple and Google information on users’ whereabouts.
Why?
Market research. If the marketing people know where you are, they can send online, direct-location or interest-specific ads towards you.
Interest specific?
Sure. Knowledge of your personal habits helps marketers choose and display ads that present objects you’re more likely to buy.
Hammer drills for tool shoppers, for example.
Truth is, both business and the government know more about you than you think. Forbes.com, in a July 2011 MoneyBuilder column, reported “Many of the nation’s leading banks and card issuers, including Wells Fargo, Citi, USAA, Sovereign Bank and Discover, are selling information about consumers’ shopping habits to retailers.”
A Consumer Reports (CR) article titled “Big Brother is Watching” (September 2009) tells of companies that “compile tons of personal information on you.” It said your personal information comprises everything from shopping habits to health history. Your data is available to creditors, employers, property owners, insurers, law-enforcement agencies, criminals and others via public and private databases that collect, buy and sell such records.
CR said the information could include your background, health history, credit history, checking accounts, insurance claims, purchase returns and any rental history.
Cohen said a smart phone essentially creates a dossier of your travels, and consumers have no control over who will eventually see the information. “A record of our locations over time can reveal whether we go to tent revivals or to radical political meetings; abortion clinics or AIDs doctors,” he said.
Byron Acohido, in USA TODAY’s September 9, 2011 edition, said location apps that locate users have opened numerous new business models, but also present opportunities for criminals or stalkers who could obtain your present or future location.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said private companies are tracking many of our movements online and selling that information to other companies, who, in turn, share it with law enforcement and the government. It said in-use tracking technology has become highly sophisticated, and citizens have little chance of knowing what is taking place when they surf and how to prevent such spying.
It gets more complex. The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) website says data collecting companies enhance consumer dossiers by overlaying information from other databases. In part, these comprise your physical characteristics; clothing sizes; residence characteristics; electric, gas, telephone, cable and cellular-phone usage; Internet subscriptions; contributions; memberships; Internet and mail-order purchases; pet ownership and gambling, arts, book and music preferences.
Credit agencies use such information to profile you. Businesses use it to “target” you, e.g., to form and dispense ad programs specifically for you and people like you. An example would be a signshop owner who shops at Lowes, eats lunch at T.G.I. Fridays, watches football on Monday nights and has financed a Ford pickup. Through various sources — email, the USPS, texting — he, without recognizing the phenomena, may receive discount slips for Sears’s tools, lunch deals from O’Charley’s, big-screen price coupons from Best Buy and invitations to visit the Chevrolet showroom.
It’s not a bad thing, but, if distended, “target” systems could limit your exposure to other interesting areas. See it like always dining at franchise restaurants.
That’s why I like magazines — the next page is always a discovery.
Also, location apps aren’t always bad news. They can find the nearest ice-cream shop.
The ACLU said our online activities leave ever-growing trails of personal information. With every click, it said, we entrust our conversations, emails, photos, location information and much more to companies like Facebook, Google and Yahoo. It questions the consequences when the government asks these companies to hand over their users private information.
Although a few U.S. laws focus on specific privacy situations, none appear to keep up with the available (and advancing) technology. Cohen said our privacy laws are a mess. He said it’s illegal for phone-service companies to disclose customers’ locations, but such releases are okay for Internet service firms. Meaning, your iPhone’s telephone paraphernalia is constrained, but its Internet-linked gear could freely disperse data to whomever the service provider chooses.
EPIC’s website says the American List Counsel (Princeton, NJ) sells an "ultra affluent database" that’s enhanced with economic information. It also reports that Claritas (San Diego) divides its studied individuals into different groups, which are then categorized into subgroups. The primary groups: Elite Suburbs, Urban Uptown, 2nd-City Society, Landed Gentry, Affluentials, Inner Suburbs, Urban Midscale, 2nd-City Center, Exurban Blues, 2nd-City Blues, Heartlanders, Working Towns and Rustic Living.
Where do you fit?