It’s the ‘Other’ FBI that scares me
See I am just an ordinary, law-abiding guy. The Federal Bureau of Investigation, the original FBI, doesn’t scare me. I would only have to worry about them if I was engaged in nefarious activities which I am not.
However, it scares me and should scare everyone when you are living an ordinary life and someone is gathering enormous amounts of information about you and sharing it with everyone, for money. The more they know about me, the more money they demand from those who want it. Sounds kinda criminal doesn’t it? But it’s not. I have just described to you the ‘Other’ FBI. FaceBook Intelligence.
Yes, Facebook knows more about me than my mom. They know what I’m saying, when I’m saying it and who I’m saying it to. And they sell that information to any hungry wolf out there that wants it.
The other day I was on the phone with my brother telling him that my family and I are planning on visiting San Francisco in late 2015 for my parents sixtieth wedding anniversary. He asked where I planned to stay and I said that I wasn’t sure. I said we’d look into maybe renting an AirBNB or maybe a couple of hotel rooms outside San Francisco. Within hours I started receiving emails from airBNB, Trip Advisor and a myriad of other companies with subject headers like “San Francisco vacation rentals for Allan Marston”. Creepy or what?
How did they get that? Someone please tell me it’s not the Messenger App on my phone because Mark Zuckerberg specifically said it would not do that. Don’t tell me it was coincidence. And no I did not type anything into a browser or status update or a tweet.
I understand that Facebook has to gather some information to sell to advertisers so that they can provide me all the free services that they do. I get that! What I don’t get is how deep they go with getting my information and do they really need to go that deep? It also scares me that algorithms could misunderstand my conversations. What if I spoke to a friend about me visiting someone on a farm and shooting guns for the first time. And what if he, who once had a mental breakdown after he got left at the altar responds that he too has fired guns at a local range. Suddenly this information is all put together in nanoseconds and now he has the real FBI or CIA at his door. All because the ‘other’ FBI gathered too much information.
So I am looking for some real answers here. But guess what I’m gonna get. More vacation rental information and now maybe some information on guns. For the record, that who gun story was made up to use as an example. I have never fired a gun and I have no intentions of doing so and I do not have any friends who were left at the altar on their marriage day. Oh no I just said marriage. Now wedding ads will come my way. I better stop before it gets too crazy.
