-by Tom Barten

A few days ago I wrote an article about personal ads. I was rambling about my experience on personal ads. When I was doing some research and made my own questionnaire, I asked the people: “what do you think of this mothod?” You wouldn’t think, but most of the answers I got was “irritating”, “unpleasant”, “harder to ignore” and “shocking”.

The “harder to ignore”, I can get. It is much more effective when you see your own name somewhere. You think “hey, that’s me!”. But the last one I can get too. Sometimes I am shocked on what companies knows about me (what I bought, what my last search was on Google etc.) and how they use it in ads. You think your info stays where you put it, but, also when you blocked the information for outsiders, it isn’t. Or am I so totally wrong? Does companies inside the European Union transfer the information to a subsidiary in a country in e.g. Africa, where are no, or not that strict policies on privacy. That is what I think. I am not sure if it is legal or not, but I can imagine this happens right now. What do you think? Am I totally wrong? Am I a Dystopian?