Do Not Track

This personalized web series about privacy and the online economy shows who benefits from the private data that we unthinkingly share every day through tracking. While watching the videos, if you share your information with the Do Not Track website, they reveal what the web knows about you. There are already companies like Lenddo that lend money to people based on their activity on social media. Ukrainians who went out to protest against the annexation of Crimea were traced via their phone and got a text message saying that they were registered as illegal demonstrators. And then there’s the story of a depressed woman from Quebec whose medical coverage was stopped after the insurance company saw smiling photos on her Facebook page and concluded that she had gotten better. People who “like” something on Facebook give away a lot of personal information about themselves and their friends. The German blogger Richard Gutjahr guides us into the incredible world of online profiling. Who you are, where you go, whatever you do, even the apps on your phone spy on you all day long. Based on the information collected from users of Do Not Track, three possible predictions are made regarding the future of digital society.