Google ditching chromecast

[Agent_24]

I understand the worry about the malignant use of identity data, but surely this 'privacy' thing is seriously overhyped. Personalisation is a tool to sell stuff, not a lot more. The Big Brother idea is probably valid, but no single witholding of personal data is going to stop that train. Reminds me a bit of that old bloke trying to stop the sea advancing on his toes. So long as data is money, we are going to be harvested, be it loyalty cards, genetic tracing, our physical location and movements, shopping habits, criminal history, medical status - it is all grist to the mill of a bunch of people who also put their pants on the same way we do.

We are not unique. We are not special. We are just people, like everyone else.

Until you aren't.

Situations can change rapidly, such as with the US overturning abortion rights.
https://www.npr.org/2022/05/10/109748296...eriod-apps

With at least one state looking at classifying abortion as homicide, the potential is there for someone to suddenly become a criminal just because of a law change. Suddenly your data becomes incriminating evidence over something that should never be an issue.

Not to mention the number of serious data breaches that occur, because not only do too many corporations hoard too much data about you, they always seem to have flaws in their security. Here's a recent one:
https://www.tomsguide.com/computing/onli...ns-exposed

Sure, the companies themselves may not do anything malicious with your data, targeted ads are probably not the worst thing in the world, but hackers or a nefarious government may well do something untoward.

Given how easy it is for data to be exchanged (and stolen) in the digital age, I'd say privacy is nowhere near hyped enough.

on the subject of privacy, I read somewhere about a bloke in the US whose vehicle insurance premiums increased threefold - turned out the car computer had been uploading all sorts of stats about his driving (obviously bad), the car manufacturer had sent the data to some company for aggregation or some such, and his insurance company had bought this data from this other company... all perfectly legal...

So a very good reason not to share any more data than is absolutely necessary...

Exactly, never share anything you don't have to.