The Internet Knows That You are a Dog

I've been reading the book Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy by data scientist Cathy O'Neil. The book talks about the dangers of "black box" algorithms that are increasingly relied upon for assisting with (or even making) all sorts of decisions.

At one point in the book, O'Neil references the "nobody knows you're a dog" meme, based on a cartoon that originally appeared in The New Yorker. That may have been true at the outset of the online revolution, but WMDs (weapons of math destruction -- the name that O'Neil gives to pernicious algorithms) are quickly changing that reality. Now, every interaction with an online service provides another bit of data to be ingested, studied, and monetized.

Vendors are now moving to location-based marketing using wifi. In exchange for that "free wifi" in your hotel room, you might be providing a treasure trove of information to marketers.

Even with purportedly anonymous data, it is possible for dedicated analysts to merge that information with other publicly available data to create new insights. (Such was the case when NYC taxi data were merged with metadata from paparazzi photos to identify which stars were generous tippers and which were not.)

Although recent laws in the EU have put a premium on end-user control of privacy, it is unclear the extent to which we can extricate ourselves from the WMD black hole that we seem to have fallen into. Conducting life offline does not seem to be a realistic option in this day and age.