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Trust is hard won but easily lost forever. Why are global tech and consumer companies trying so hard to win our favour and approval? It gives them licence to spy on us with our blessing.
Take Amazon, for instance. Their all-pervading presence, via listening stations they call Alexa, just got a little bit creepier. Not only do they charge you an exorbitant fee for a speaker with voice recognition control, but they programme it to listen to your cough so that it can automatically charge you for the cold remedies it ordered on your behalf.
You should read the terms and conditions of their new ‘Influencer Programme’, yikes!
Applications linked to ‘Find My Child’ can now be used to listen in on real-life conversations, whether the phone is in use or not. Google can take control of the camera on your mobile phone the moment that you open up its mapping tool. DNA Ancestry customers, who paid to have their biological identity placed on an international database, are now routinely screened in search of murder suspects. Those responsible for security footage at hospitals are considering using software to identifying sufferers of depression as they visit sick relatives.
Of course, they will be depressed; their friends or family are in hospital. I digress.