Just read an article about a Congressman trying to hype privacy concerns in regards to the upcoming Congressional questioning of Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg. I had to laugh.

Why, you ask?

Privacy in America, let alone in the world is a joke. How do you think the Junk Mail industry got started? How do you think Credit Cards got off the ground so fast?

You go to the store and you buy something and then when you get home and turn on your desktop computer and start looking at you social media page and there it is an ad for what you just bought, but it was cheaper next door to the store you just came from. How did this start you ask yourself.

Way back when it was implied in those old comic books where you just had to buy that toy through the mail. The person or company got your name and address from when you bought the item. From that item they were able to assign some values like age, gender, and what you may like. Then someone came along and paid him for that information. Then turned around and convince some other company that you may become a customer to them if they would pay for him to send you these advertisements to you. BINGO! You are now on a list to get JUNK MAIL!

The same thing happens today, just at the speed of electrons. Remember all that fine print that you just browse over? Yep. That’s it. You just agreed to all of that, when you clicked.

Even when you get a new smart phone you have already passed over most of the legalize fine print and signed for it. Sometimes you may think you have optioned out of certain aspects but they come back to the fine print when you bought your smart phone or other items. Most option outs start at the time you option out. They already have your information.

Did these companies and organizations take advantage of you while covering their backsides? Probably. We are not all lawyers, or big corporations, we are just regular citizens trying to make it through the day.

You keep hearing about all these data breaches, but after a week or two you hear nothing more. If your information was part of the breach, the company involved will usually send you a notice that your data may have been exposed and they offer you a year free monitoring service to watch for misuse of your data.  That is like hiring an armed guard to watch your house and notify you if someone tries to get in.  The armed guard will only watch your house, not stop someone from entering and doing what they will.  They will not protect you from the loss.  There needs to be updates through the media about these breaches that hold these people responsible.  There are some companies that will help you recover any loss due to a data breach but you have to pay for that service.

If there is anything to come about all these known data breaches it will probably be buried to cover a company’s bottom line.