I’ve been spying on you.
Some of what I’ve seen is fairly innocuous. I know, for example, what groceries you buy. But I also know what movies you like to watch, including the occasional adult title. (Haha, I can’t believe you watched 1996’s Playboy’s Girls of the Internet.) And I’ve seen the inside of your home, from multiple vantage points. I’ve seen the faces of all your family members, and I know what you looked like when you were a child. I could save those pictures if I wanted to. Maybe I already have. You’ll never know.
It’s uncomfortable to think about just how much of your personal data is floating around out in the world; data you’ve entrusted to various companies you’ve forgotten about, or handed off to third parties you’re not even aware of. You can’t control that data— if you click an affiliate link in one of my YouTube videos, you can’t stop Amazon from telling me what else you buy. You can’t stop me from seeing that you clicked on a Facebook ad that I created. You can’t stop me from saving that information. Read more at The Stranger.