And so once the basic business proposition is “this company will make the most amazing Web services available and give them away for free in order to sell you to advertisers,” plummeting levels of privacy become inevitable.
Which means the only question becomes: how much do you value your privacy in a world that’s increasingly engaged with the free?
Don’t get me wrong, I love getting something for nothing as much as the next guy, and I’m more than happy to sacrifice a little privacy about things that aren’t really all that important (i.e. which might be the reason why those frequent shopper cards work so well, I mean, who really cares about who knows what products they buy at the supermarket?), but where does the line need to be drawn?