AR Dystopia

DOOM
The current technology we hold in our pockets is constantly mapping and tracking. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it can be depending on how our data is treated. Niantic’s Pokemon Go now offers the users to leave tracking on at all times to record distance walked outside of the app being used. This is great for hatching that Pokemon egg you have been incubating. The other side of that coin is the fact that Niantic now owns your daily travel schedule. What happens when their servers get hacked and someone within or outside the company now know exactly where you are at all times? Should the price of Pokemon be privacy?

Privately owned servers may help to keep specific and sensitive spacial maps privatized. It is possible to host private secure servers for such sensitive data, but anyone who brings a personal AR Mapping device to those grounds instantly owns the same maps. When it is so convenient to map and not even think through the action of doing so, how many people will accidentally publicize the exact dimensions of a friend’s house? How will we protect sensitive data like home security and global positioning? At the pace we are advancing in the world of AR, a large population of people will be mapping the world with little understanding of the impacts of recording such data.
And GLOOM
The good news is that every AR company is very concerned with privacy and protecting the users of their apps/hardware. This may prove to be a futile effort in the end though. With everyone online recording and accessing data, can anything remain private? Apple’s cloud had been hacked many times, and people’s personal data has been dumped on public forums for everyone to see. As long as there is someone that wants to hack into user’s accounts there will always be ways to do so. GTA 5 was equipped with state of the art

An example of how persistent people are to get what they want. Here is a couple lines from the Rockstar user agreement. Rockstar encrypted their whole game and all data so everything needed two separate passwords and IDs to run. Yet, the search for GTA 5 Mods on youtube produces too many results to even scroll past.