Are you concerned about cloud privacy? 

What information do you share with your closest friends and family about your life? 

Do you trust them with your darkest secrets about your internet viewing habits, your shopping trends, or your financial well being? 

Probably not, but did you know you are sharing this information with every company you signup with using one of their products?

Cloud Privacy Does Not Exist!

Let me let you in on a secret.  Companies are making money, a lot of money, on the information you provide them with all those “free” applications and services you sign up for everyday. 

They get to collect tons of information about you.  I think you need to ask yourself  what is this product or services actually costing you to use.  Free is never really free!

Companies know in the near future, billions of advertising dollars need somewhere.  The TV and radio show advertising is declining, diverting those marketing dollars somewhere else. 

What gets a marketing person excited, direct targeting of products to customers (I believe the term is called retargeting). 

Companies know this.  They also know you have shared a lot of information about what you like and where you spend your time.  They can easily advertise to you products and services where ever you happen to be. 

All this in an effort to separate you from your money.  That is one of the biggest company benefits that is leading the innovation of all this new technology.

So Where Does This Leave You?

You want to use this technology (for free if possible) but keep your information private. 

The answer is simple or at least it was for me. 

There is no such thing as cloud privacy in the modern world. 

The sooner we get use to that, the easier life will be for everyone.  I don’t care if Netflix keeps records of my viewing habits or if Google tracks my web browsing or emails. 

This frees me to now use these services and hopefully make my life easier.  That is the goal of technology and this is the cost of it for you

You probably have a different opinion and I truly respect it. 

In a perfect world companies would respect our privacy and not use our personal information for business gains but that is not the world we live in today. 

Find a few products you like and share with those companies.  Be very particular with who you share your data with.  Will they protect it with the best security and will they use the data in ethical ways?

What the Future Looks Like

Lets take a step into the future where companies get to use our personal information to provide services (and make money doing it). 

It is now the year 2020 and home automation is common.  You expect your house to know your personal likes and dislikes so it can better help you manage your personal life. 

It needs to know what you like to eat, the music you like to listen to, and the type of news or video programming you like.  This way when you return home from work these services can be provided to you.

You would expect this and the way to provide is is to have the service collect this information about you. 

In order to provide the music or video programming to you, these companies will need to interface with the music and video stations to make sure your stations are broadcasting. 

In order to serve you better, these companies needs to know you. 

There is no doubt the cost of these services is your privacy. 

This retargeting will become expected behavior in the near future, again at the cost of privacy.  I am OK with this direction, but sometimes need to be able to do things online that are not associated with my permanent record.

Browser Incognito Mode

There are plenty of times I shop for other people especially around Christmas time.  There are times when I research problems about other people’s computers or situations.  This information is not about my life but about my customer’s or extended family’s life.

Technology needs to make allowances for this.  I predict in the next year or 2, Internet stealth products will become much more common. 

They will be available to regular people because it will be easier to allow me to separate my online habits . 

There are plenty of other issues around Internet privacy which need to be worked out.  I will discuss them in future articles but is beyond the scope of privacy within Cloud services.  Those are Internet privacy concerns.

Now that you know what this “free” services is costing you, you can decide if you want to use these services and all the benefits that go along with it. 

Billions of people all over the world have chosen to live what I would call a public life on the internet.  It is the direction the world is heading. 

One thing is for sure, the near future will be drastically different then the recent past.

Conclusion

There is little to no privacy it in the modern world.  I believe knowledge is a critical part of everyone’s life.  Now that you are knowledgeable with the direction of technology, you are better armed to make decisions about your privacy in the future.

Let me know if you agree or disagree with me on cloud privacy.  Comment below and share with everyone how you protect your privacy online.  The more we learn about this important topic, the better protected we are in our online lives.