There is a growing trend towards self-tracking and the rise of the "quantified self", suddenly made easier by the ubiquity of embedded sensors.
However, Evgeny Morozov warned during a fascinating recent address that those of us who would refuse to self-track when the majority of people do self-track may be treated with suspicion. The assumption would not be that you refuse to self-track because you want to exercise autonomy or you fear about your privacy, but rather because you are not walking enough or you are not a safe driver or you eat too much fat.
The FT warned that third parties, which consist primarily of advertising and analytics firms, typically use the information gathered from consumers who are tracking diseases, diets, bicycle trip distances and even menstrual cycles to build profiles or display personalised ads.
Meanwhile, everywhere we go, our phone is sending out signals that can be assembled to form a picture of our movements. We can't turn them off, and companies have begun to pick them up, often without any indication that they're doing so. As this trend develops, could smartphones spell the end of real-world privacy?