The (Watch)ful Eye In (Ou)r Pocke(t)s
Picture this, you’re walking home after a long day at work, its cold and dark, you’re tired, worn out and long for nothing more than to get home quickly to your warm bed. However, since you left the office a large man has been following your every footstep, knowing each corner you’re about to make before you take them, hearing every word that exits your mouth and enters your ear. He knows your name, address, bank details, favourite coffee shops, and supermarkets. Even proceeds to watch you sleep. Every part of information about you he knows and could use it all to get to you and cause damage in countless ways.
Sounds scary right? You’d probably want to avoid that at all costs? Most people with sane mind would.
What if I told you that in fact this happens every day, to you, to me, everybody. But nobody tries to avoid it, in fact they welcome it with open arms. Embracing it against their face and carrying it in their pocket. I am of course talking about mobile phones, but most importantly the new technology that is cookies. And all the enhancements that they entail. Cookies are files stored on devices that remembers information regarding the ‘user’ and the website/app being used. Well that’s all they tell you at least. In fact, they also communicate to one another by having the cookie constantly running alongside others, somewhat connecting the dots with one another. This allows the server to deliver a page tailored to the ‘user’, or the page itself can contain some script which is aware of the data in the cookie and so is able to carry information from one visit to the website (or related site) to the next.
Whilst this is going on, on screen the microphones in your devices are also listening and picking up any key words that are said. For instance, have you ever noticed how you may be having a conversation with somebody over the phone about anything really and then you go on google or any social media platform and see an advertisement for the exact thing you were talking about? Or even spend time looking at one style on an app such as ASOS, and next thing you know all the adverts you’re seeing on your phone relate to that. This is done because the companies behind the cookies believe that if you are talking about something then you must hold an interest with it, and therefore would possibly want to buy.
Fears of cookies are completely understandable and quite smart if you ask me, considering the information they possess and the amount of surveillance they carry on you, it’s almost as if you’re under investigation. But where does this lead to? Your phones are now listening to everything you say and manipulating the content that you see, when do they start to try and implement certain substances to alter your beliefs or try and push somebody else’s ideology upon you. Or maybe it won’t go that far, maybe it’ll stay as it is and the furthest it’ll go is round the clock observations and information storage. For the sole purpose of deciding our ads.
But I mean, is that much better? Still a bit creepy.
