Erasing David

I don't generally listen to newsradio except when I want to catch up on the headlines, but my radio happened to be tuned to BBC World Service on Saturday and I'm glad that it was because I stumbled across a very interesting program. It's called "Click" and it's about global technology, social media and the internet.

The topic for this week was digital privacy and online anonymity. The host Gareth Mitchell was talking to a man called David Bond who has created a documentary about how the difficulties of remaining anonymous thanks to all of the technology that can be used to track you. He did his best to erase all traces of himself from online media such as facebook, ebay, online phonebooks and even called the airlines to get them to remove him from their flight databases. Then he asked people from the top private investigator firm Cerberus to track him down and catch him within 30 days, using only his name.

Apart from making me want to really watch the documentary, listening to the program got me thinking about privacy and anonymity which are a really big deal in the world today. David was trying for anonymity which I don't think he would be able to achieve (and from what I saw of the online trailer, he ended up getting rather paranoid), but privacy is certainly something that we put our trust in when information about us is entered into any technological device.

How many of you read the terms and conditions when signing up to a website, a service or buying a computer program? How about when you buy an airline ticket or use your credit card? I know that I used to just skim through them, but if you think about it, terms and conditions are long enough for their developers to hide anything in them. Just imagine if, after installing your latest word processing program someone turned up at your door demanding your firstborn child because you agreed to it in the T&C? Not only that, some companies will turn your information over to others for "marketing" purposes and you can't sign up to them without having that happen.

For me, the problem isn't that this is happening (because it's unavoidable) but rather my own attitude towards it. Not that I've done anything to have private investigators tracking my down, but that I'm willing to blithely give away that information to get services. I used to joke that when I signed up to Amazon they could hunt me down and force me to sell my soul, but I'm not sure if that's too far from the truth nowadays.

Video source: Erasing David trailer