Telecoms spying on us and the loss of privacy online

Posted on July 11, 2007
Filed Under Technology | 1 Comment

Cellphone tower There is lots of talk these days about the privacy issues surrounding the vast amount of personal data that Internet companies are collecting of us. It is scary to know that a company such as Google has historical records of every keyword we have searched for and any site that we have clicked through. Not to mention that they have access to all our email (for those using Gmail) and the documents on our desktop (for those using Google Desktop.) And last but not least, they also have a record of all the ads that we have clicked on and with the new referrals product, soon they will know about every product we have ever bought online.

But Google, Yahoo and Microsoft are not telecoms. A couple of days ago, I realized that telecoms, i.e., those companies providing us with phone service (among other things) are spying on us every time we make a call. Okay, it is a strong suspicion rather than concrete evidence but it seems too much of a coincidence to let it pass as such.

So, here is what happened.

Several members of my family are visiting Europe for a summer holiday. I live in North America. A couple of days ago, I decided to give them a surprise call. This is the first time in almost 2 years that I have placed an overseas phone call.

The very next day, not 12 hours had passed since my call, I received a sales call from a long-distance savings company offering me extremely low rates for overseas calls. Note that they did not offer me a plan for long distance savings but specifically for overseas calls. I have no need for such a program and about 20 seconds into the sales call, I thanked the person and hung up. I didn’t think much of the call then other than the fact that I was annoyed that they had called me.

Computer privacy The next day, I realized how I had not received such a sales call in years. But within hours of making one overseas call, I received a sales call specifically for this. It seems to me, that the moment that I placed the call, this company somehow obtained the information and added me to their database of possible sales targets.

And that was from a single call!

Now, imagine the kind of targeting that Internet companies such as Google and Yahoo will be able to offer advertisers with all the data that they are collecting on a daily basis. It won’t be long before every purchasing decision we make is somehow decided for us by the advertiser who bid the most to get their product in front of us. When it comes to free will, we are very likely to lose it in the not so distant future; at least when it comes to our consumer selfs.

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