Invasive Commercialism

In the past 10 years, we have seem the dot com bubble, the housing bubble, and the credit bubble, but we still find ourselves continuing to buy wants before our needs. Now the internet has become our personal day to day buddy to help us stay connected to friends and to shop for the best deals.

Facebook in recent years has begun to get into the local advertising market while you stalk your best friend and wonder why they haven't called you in such a long time for a beer or two. The ads can be purchased by local businesses or even just by people like you and I. Your internet connection tends to leave a trace of where you are due to DNS entries from you Internet Service Provider. For instance, living in East Lansing, Michigan, I tend to see ads geared towards me in my area to go to a concert or come to this new restaurant. The invasiveness is smart yet troubling. Big brother is using it's eye to get into your wallet and it gets creepier.

When using sites like Facebook, you are giving the site permission to scan your information and this also displays ads geared towards you. If your a single male, that likes Nickelback, and a college student, you'll see an array of ads for graduate school, new alternative artists, and "Nice Single Girls in East Lansing'. This sort of advertising is also present in your email, which has sparked privacy concerns with megagiant Google over it's gmail service for years which scans your email to give you directions and worded advertisements.

So before you post the most simple pieces of yourself online, think about who and why is asking this information. Now look at your wallet...