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Privacy - Care about it.

The trouble with privacy is that it's hard to convey the risks without sounding petty.

So what if a machine reads my emails? I have nothing to hide...

So what if it's used to target me with adverts? I just ignore ads anyway...

None of them have tangible consequences, and it's naturally difficult to see the bigger picture in which our data is being used. So I want to collect some simple examples of material cost of tracking and data-harvesting. I want examples that are easy to relate to 'everyday' experiences.

Suppose you complain about a service, get no satisfactory resolution, yet continue to use the service. The company has learned something about you that could affect the way you are dealt with in future. If they sell that data-point about you to other companies, it could affect the way you are dealt with elsewhere too. You have been algorithmically deemed a pushover, and now everyone chooses to push you around.

Conversely, you stand your ground and get the service on your fair and reasonable terms. The data reflects this, you're algorithmically deemed an awkward customer, andso nobody really wants your business when there are plenty of pushovers willing to hand over their money for less effort.

Google have been pushing their way into schools to harvest data on our kids. This data will live forever, either directly as harvested data, or indirectly as derived data. There's really little difference, derived data is just a way for data to persist after the original data has been deleted. Would you have liked your school life documented permanently in data? This is what's currently happening to your (our) children.