Your Data Footprint Is Affecting Your Life In Ways You Can't Even Imagine (fastcoexist.com)

An anonymous reader cites the following excerpts from a FastCoExist article: Innocently clicking on a link results in ad targeting that's hard to shake and our purchases quickly reveal more information than we intend, such as the infamous example of Target knowing a woman is pregnant before she's told her family -- and before she's purchased any baby products. [...] Predictions about you are deeply shaping your life in ways of which you are probably blissfully unaware. Predictions about you (and millions of other strangers) are starting to deeply shape your life. Your career, your love life, major decisions about your health and well-being, and even if you end up in jail, are now being governed in no small part by the digital bread crumbs you've left behind -- many of which you don't even know you've dropped in the first place.

Comments

Possible solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Only buy routine items online. For anything that requires a bit of discretion, buy it at a physical store with cash.

Re:Possible solution

[JoeMerchant]

That $10K limit was set a very long time ago, when $10K might have bought a house in the burbs. It keeps getting more intrusive as time goes on, but technology keeps making it easier to do the transaction checking and logging.

Re:Block all trackers

[Anonymous Coward]

Recommend disconnect over ghostery

one is open source, other is owned by ad agency

Way Different

[Anonymous Coward]

The huge difference is the global reach of the corporations and their infinite permanent memory. The old clerk may have seen you purchase a couple of items and may have put two and two together. But, they could never see what you were looking at everywhere you went in town, the next town, on vacation in Italy... They could never remember everything you bought from your babies conception to his college graduation and beyond.

The scale, the permanency, the ease of access, the inability to threaten the clerk should they not mind their own business... It's a whole new ballgame and it sucks.

Re:Cash is no longer a guarantee of anonymity

[BitterOak]

Please cite as I am unaware that any county has figured out how to go fully cashless.

Sweden is almost cashless now, and plans to be fully cashless in the next few years. There are others on the way, too.