...with software products not only recording everything you do, but obscuring how to control said feature.
I'm not against having something like the SmartBar in FF3, but why don't they make it easy to turn off? Or to control the content that they're keeping track of?
I mean, if it's software that's loaded on *my* machine for *my* personal use, who *else* are they saving the info for? I hate the idea that so many software products on my computer (especially the OS) are recording my activities as history, recently viewed/used files, etc. without my knowing it and, more importantly, without my being able to easily clean it all up.
It's not just that I'm afraid someone might find an occasional curious visit to a pr0n0 site. ;) Those are bad enough, but I'm an adult and a guy...so what? What bothers me is the notion that if, for some reason, someone is looking at my computer...a worker at a repair shop or whoever...that the backlogs of what's on my computer might be used against me in some fashion.
It's not much of a stretch to imagine what the media or authorities would make of my computer and history, if some misfortune fell on me or my family and the authorities had to investigate what they found there. I have nothing to hide, but that wouldn't really mean much if it was leaked that I was a horror writer (gasp!) who wrote dark, disturbing tales AND visited (gasp!) horror websites! And an occasional pr0n site! And a subversive, Canadian techno-comic strip board! ;)
Silly and paranoid? Sure! I'll go with that for myself. I just don't like the idea of having the stuff that I buy playing "black box flight recorder" on my life.
Sorry for the rant...it's one of my pet peeve pressure points, I guess. Does the FF3 SmartBar represent all that "evil" I'm raging about? Maybe. Maybe not. But the first time the SmartBar's autocomplete pops up a website that gives away to my wife the place from where I ordered a gift for her, I'm uninstalling it and going back to something less obtrusive. ;) |
