The Internet is a great place to be if you are hoping to start a business and get a hold on your savings. It can be a great place to meet friends and even a future lover. But the anonymity of the Internet is also a great drawback when it comes to truly knowing people. Moreover, you can get your identity stolen, and your doings online can be public knowledge. As the adage goes, nothing that you do online goes unnoticed.

With the privacy of the Internet truly a pipe dream, what other ways can privacy truly be a thing of the past? Biometrics technologies, which can implant microchips in order to track people, are currently engineered to track by location, but might be engineered one day to track people in terms of what they do, what their health is like, and what their secret lives are like. The merest video surveillance of our shopping malls, doctors’ offices, and entertainment venues is a sign that all eyes are on you and your safety.

As you can tell, although privacy is a thing of the past, it can be used for good. For instance, wireless communication can allow you to be tracked anywhere on the planet, which can be advantageous if you use a GPS device and get lost in the middle of nowhere on your way to a major city. Background checks on people might seem invasive, but you will thank private investigators one day when they turn up background checks on people that you want to hire, work with, or even marry!

The implications of privacy invasion, however, extend far beyond our own need to keep ourselves anonymous for the short term. Genetic privacy is becoming an issue especially for insurance companies, which might be given genetic data that could keep people from being insured for certain diseases to which they may be predisposed. Genetic privacy may also be an issue for certain employers who would want a clean bill of health on all their employees.

There are many other privacy issues that are impacting the way we look at the world today. For instance, social networking has become a way to expand a person’s network in order to get employed in the future, find friends, and expand one’s social circle in general. It has also become a haven for stalkers and identity theft. No one is exempt from the pitfalls of a lack of privacy: celebrities have their own paparazzi stalkers, and the time-tested method of secretive photography can make or break a career as much as a connection to the Internet can.

image credits to bejealousofme

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