The work of being watch is an article by Mark Andrejevic that is focused on consumer’s exploiting themselves online and somewhat unknowingly provide private information about themselves. One of the most critical parts of interpersonal communication is self disclosure, which is supposed to be given up at a person’s own discretion. However, this article reveals that may not be the case in all instances. The first example given is a person who goes by DotComGuy, named Mitch Maddox, who decided to agree to live his life in the confounds of his home for a full year. Everything that he need he would order online and if he could make it an entire year he would earn $98,000 at the end of the year. While that may not sound too bad, he was actually working 24 hours a day as he was being monitored and having advertisements all around him. He was unable to make it the full year. This article also focuses on productive surveillance, the kind that consumers benefit from but may not have to divulge that much private info to in order to see the benefits. Examples given of having to give private information that could be viewed as excessive is filling out surveys or customizing products. TiVo in particular is talked about because it gives industries the ability to see what is recorded and base their actions that follow on that. As the conclusion clearly indicates, the scope on this article is that while there may be some privacy infringement the talk about it getting out of hand is a little bit exaggerated and really there is already being a transition made to lightening up the privacy information intake based on the moderate amount of uproar that has arisen over this subject. People’s voices have been heard on this subject and online sites are acting accordingly.
How important is it to you that you have complete and total privacy over your purchases, especially those made online?
Has an invasion of privacy ever kept you from making a purchase online?
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