Surf's up!

Folks, I have become disquieted by internet advertising.

Personally, my world-view tends to straddle the median between conspiracy theories and the supine There’s Nothing to Worry About if You Haven’t Done Anything Wrong position, but it concerns me a bit whenever information obtained surreptitiously from my web-surfing surfaces in personalized online advertisements.

Ordinarily, I shuffle through my day euphorically ignorant of remote, inquisitive software exploring my well-worn cyber cubby-holes (and probably using whatever it gleans to ultimately fund its patron’s next venereal transaction), but when I find an advert on a thematically-unconnected website re-acquainting me with the services of a local dispenser in whose wares I’ve historically taken an interest, I curiously become somewhat suspicious. Whatever technology it is that allows mere advertising companies to scoop such intelligence strikes me as morally repugnant: it’s akin to sniffing through my underwear drawer to discern my taste in furniture. And if they have access to things they shouldn‘t, so do the even less savory, if such people exist.

Obviously, the drive of profitable commerce emboldens business, but shouldn’t there be some kind of federal privacy regulation reining in these invasions? I understand the USA is the Land of the Free and all that nonsense, and therefore I should look out for myself, but my hard drives are already bursting with a glorious aggregate of “anti” software; firewalls, defenders, scanners, shields, blockers et al., that self-update several times a day with thunderous verbal announcements that invariably startle me several inches vertically with a screech that gives the dog a hernia, no matter how low I carefully pre-adjust the volume control. However, when I happen upon one of these unnervingly intuitive online adverts my speakers remain frustratingly inert. Are our safeguards therefore selective? That’s not good.

How did this situation arise? Why is there no Cerberus in place to protect us from this particular brand of network intrusion? Doesn’t this Orwellian descent worry anyone else?

It seems to me there’s a lot more going on behind the scenes than we care to acknowledge.

(And preemptively; no, these personalized advertisements are not peddling deviant sexual apparatus, granny porn, studded leather undergarments, anti-chaffing ointments, instructional manuals on equine husbandry or any combinations thereof.)

(Okay, maybe just a little.)