Saturdays are normally reserved for running errands, mostly grocery shopping.
Well aware I’d be in Texas last Friday attending my niece’s volleyball game, I decided to put in some work, try getting ahead to avoid stressing.
I was humming along, half listening to a television program and half, well, working when my iPad, plugged into a nearby wall, dinged. I looked at my cellphone, which apparently knows more about my routine than I care to admit, and was startled.
Below a list of news notifications about the New York attorney general uncovering $1 billion in wire transfers involving the owners of the pharmaceutical company Purdue Pharma, blazing Saudi Arabia oil facilities and the sweetest video of toddlers, one black, one white, reuniting; was this from MAPS DESTINATIONS: 25 min to North Point…Take Bell Rd, traffic is moderate.
Right then, reminded that I needed to make a run through Bed Bath & Beyond, I got agitated, got up, dressed and headed to North Point Parkway.
It was a quick errand. I picked up a couple of boxes of Starbucks K-cups and headed back home. My phone, of course, knew that would be my next move.
RELATED | When is ‘routine’ really just an excuse for denying dignity of others?
Indeed no matter what else is on my agenda, it knows I will head to the office or back home next. On Thursdays when I go to choir rehearsal, it knows. And come any Sunday morning, it knows I will go to Antioch Baptist Church North.
When I discovered this a few months ago, it was kinda funny. I remember laughing to my husband that even my phone knows the thumpity thump of my life. It knows the pattern and the frequency and the dynamics. If it were a dance, which is how my days seem to play out, it would be a tango, all about feet and head action.
Credit: The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Credit: The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
While I like the comfort of routine in my life, I can easily adapt and ride the waves, too, but that’s my little secret.
Thank goodness.
The more I consider what my phone does know, the more I’m bothered.
This couldn’t possibly be a good thing. Right?
I know that location tracking is essential for directions and that it helps big tech to sell us things.
But should Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, and Google be able to sell ads and line their already deep pockets by mining our habits. I should at least be able to get a cut.
Why are our phones allowed to track us and share that data with anyone else?
Well, according to the experts, we gave it permission. Typical data-sharing policies are buried within pages and pages of privacy policies and terms of agreements.
Neil Kent, owner of an Atlanta Experimax franchise, says our iPhones are able to gather a lot of information about us, including location, facial recognition, voice recognition, credit card information, health information, and obviously login information and passwords.
RELATED | The internet could be your kid’s drug dealer
We, however, have to “opt in” for all of this.
I don’t know about you but I’m pretty sure I never opted in. If anything, Apple did so on my behalf and without my knowledge, but OK.
According to Kent, I can easily opt out. (I’ll have to get my daughter to show me how.)
“Apple provides pretty easy access to control this through the “Settings” app,” he said.
Experimax specializes in the sale of certified pre-owned Apple products and can also repair, upgrade or buy your current device, so I’m pretty sure Kent knows what he’s talking about.
But, really, is this phone tracking/data mining a good thing?
Yes and no, he said.
It makes for a simpler life, allowing access to a great many services at the tip of your finger or the tip of your tongue. That’s the good thing.
Here’s the bad: “This is yet another potential place for our information to be misused or stolen,” Kent told me in an email exchange.
For Kent, an Apple user for more than 30 years, that’s the least of his concerns.
RELATED | One Atlanta company knows how online scammers are taking money
But F. Beaumont Howard, a partner at Fox Rothschild in Atlanta, said we should absolutely be worried about the amount of sensitive data we are voluntarily disclosing to companies like Apple, Google and Amazon.
“Presumably, these companies are gathering massive amounts of user data in an effort to more accurately market to you, or to provide you with more useful devices and personalized services,” he said.
So, too, are identity thieves who are constantly trying to breach protected computers to steal personal information.
That’s one problem.
“Another potential problem is the United States Department of Justice, which has argued for years that tech companies must provide backdoors and encryption keys to government investigators for law enforcement and foreign intelligence purposes,” Howard said.
In fact, potential nightmare scenarios are well described in popular novels and Hollywood movies.
Fortunately, consumers in the United States have some degree of control over their government via the courts and the political process. We can also take simple steps to secure our data from identity thieves by using two-factor authentication, complex password generators and biometrics, he said.
It all sounds too complex to me, but this one I can definitely do.
Unless a company has a reasonable data privacy policy, I can choose not to do business with them. You can too.
Find Gracie on Facebook (www.facebook.com/graciestaplesajc/) and Twitter (@GStaples_AJC) or email her at gstaples@ajc.com.
About the Author
