I go down the pub and talk about all sorts of random rubbish and when I get home Facebook and google bombard me with adverts about my discussion subjects, I must leave Siri at home and see if they still know what I talk about, I tend to use cash down the pub so I doubt they know that Old Speckled Hen is my favourite tipple. Big brother is watching us.

Mike

Perhaps they will send me a few free ones for the plug.

Mike

My iPad has no GPS but google maps is near spot on with my location, they know where everybody’s WiFi is and have it mapped, an easy job to work out where you are within a few meters. Sometimes the tech can be useful, I went to the Goodwood Festival of Speed and forgot where I left my car, luckily my phone remembered where it lost the blu-tooth connection with my car and helpfully highlighted on the map where my car was. Would have been handy 35 years ago when I parked at Luton Airport in a bit of a hurry and a week later had to play hunt the car for ten minutes, before the days of remote locking so had to look at all the red cars.

Mike

I'm ever so sorry to be the one to point this out to you, but you're actually on soshal meedya on this forum.

+ I'm a little puzzled about how you are able to part with your intimate knowledge of a Chinese app called Wechat yet claim . . . . Oh, never mind.

My local club has recently gone over to a "card carry" type membership system. It's not a golf or sports club sort of place, it's just a soshal club/drinking den.

I can forgive them for being technologically naive, but I cannot forgive them for being stupid.

Whereas before the locals just wandered in & generally clogged the bar, now you have to present the card to the door lock then present the card each time you order a drink.

My attempts at pointing out just how dangerous to personal privacy this system is has fallen on mostly deaf ears, apart from the secretary, who finally read the T&C's from the supplier & promptly resigned.

They've not even registered GDPR . . . .

Last weekend, one member who has almost woken to the problem, was asking me questions about the possible implications of such a system when we just happened to overhear the barmaid gossiping to her sidekick that "Nobby" who she'd just served is currently in first place having spent £XXX's on 820 pints of lager.

If that doesn't strike the fear of God in you . . . Then you are a part of the problem.

I am pretty sure Wechat is the application the People's Republic of China is using to track its Muslim and Khazak minorities. If not it is something very similar.

China is perhaps the world leader in developing such software, and has already sold it to a number of other governments.

However, we cannot be too smug or complacent about far-away dictatorships using such spying. An item on Radio 4 the other day described a programme anyone can buy on-line, designed specifically for spying on others such as after a broken partnership. Or leading to such a breakdown. The speaker – sorry, I forget her name – had used this, and found far from helping her it made a lot more miserable because it implied not only she could not trust others, but she herself was not trustworthy.

The less one's involvement with the Internet at large, or the smart-phone-on-24-hours syndrome, the better. I refuse point-blank to use Facebook and its ilk, and I would certainly not buy a so-called " smart " 'phone if some business tried to insist I do. I know it would be for its, not my, convenience.

'

BT Internet hopes you won't do it, but you can switch off the so-called "Targetted Cookies" prior to using its e-post service. It only saves the setting for that session though. A linguistically ugly phrase for a socially ugly concept – selling your details to advertising agencies unknown to you, with only the most slender of implicit permission from you. Outlook has a similar feature but instead lists its clients… hundreds of them, but you can "Select all", and I do.

'

A warning tale came from a friend who a few years ago, proudly displayed photos of his recently-completed, major model-engineering project on Facebook. It elicited a number of enquiries about its value…. (He did delete them.)

I think there should be a global law that all devices that can look at us , hear us or track your browsing history or location should have these abilities disabled at the manufacturing stage and they can only be enabled by the user with a password access should they wish to use that feature . I detest having to go through the settings of my various to turn all this stuff off ! Google is the biggest offender and i recently found out that my ipad was keeping tabs on my recent locations so Google could send me ads for shops in those locations – that got turned off and the history cleared immediately after finding out about that !

I noticed that the ads from Ebay and Banggood also seem to be focused on my browsing history or recently viewed items so they now get cleared after a browsing session .

That I find annoying is Google's way of sending me news stories I may be interested in.

It seems to have a feedback loop, so I clicked on two stories about Black Sabbath, now I get an alert every time Sharon buys Ozzy a new toothbrush.

Equally, it knows I'm interested in the Hyabusa mission so I get daily alerts about the latest city-sized asteroid that isn't going to hit Earth.

Actually, I've kind of lost interest in Hyabusa because I now get served the same story about it from about twenty outlets.

I'm slowly trying to customise it with the controls that pop up, but I don't want to stop using it or otherwise 98% of my news would come from the same two sources…

Neil

.

Ah but … Does it know not to send you stories about big Suzuki bikes ?

MichaelG.

Just try buying something over the counter at Screwfix, they get very sniffy if you won't divulge your postcode and email. I take the line of least resistance and give them the postcode of the Town Hall, and my e-mail is [email protected]. That usually shuts them up.

I'm also a passive resister at Screwfix when I can be (i.e. when I'm not having to order something in for collection). I simply decline to give them an email, a phone number or an address, and I pay in cash. (I have to say that part of my objection is not wanting to divulge my personal details within earshot of the other shoppers waiting behind me in the queue). I always of course ask for a receipt, and make a point of checking with them that the receipt will be valid in spite of my wish to remain anonymous.

They do get sniffy, but when I point out that this was the system in shops everywhere for many years and the retailer never insisted on knowing more about you as a condition of handing over the goods, they tend to acknowledge the reasonableness of my position.

What about CCTV cameras, now? Has anyone taken video footage inside a shop as I have, and been challenged by staff about it, all the time their shop is blithely training CCTV cameras on you?

And while we're at it, what happened to all the shops anyway? Most seem to have been nosed out by "stores"? How long before we go "storing" when we need groceries?