I opened a fortune cookie the other day and found an ad for a tax-preparation service.
Like a bird dog pointing quail, the marketers had found me. This time, it was on the back of a paper prophecy, in the steamy depths of a brown bag that housed my beef and vegetable combo.
Marketing is a ubiquitous part of modern life. Look around right now and count the number of logos you see. If you’re inside, chances are it’s a bunch. Even outdoors, you are probably within view of a few, especially if you’re reading on a screen.
From my desk, I spy the logo on my shirt, another on my computer, one on a package of gum and a fourth on my key fob.
How many ads does the average person see in a day? Estimates range from 5,000 to 10,000. This number seems ridiculous until you consider car logos, website banners, billboards, food boxes, toothpaste tubes and emails.
Going all day without exposure to a message trying to sell you something is as impossible as not thinking about the color red after somebody has told you not to think about the color red.
Worse yet are the marketers who are selling YOU — your tastes, habits and browsing preferences — to other marketers.
Apple this week made it harder for app developers to nose around in our business. The new iOS 14.5 update has a pop-up screen that prompts users to allow or not allow sites like Facebook or Google to track them across other applications and then share that data with third parties.
If you’ve ever wondered how you can search for a particular item on your phone and then find an ad for that very item on a shopping site later that day — well, that’s how. You’ve been sold.
The old saying — if the service is free then you are the product — has never been more true. Apple, it seems, is trying to build good will by allowing users to reclaim some of the privacy the computer giant itself stole over the last decade.
I know a couple of people — friends of friends, let’s call them, to protect their identities — who believe that unseen forces are spying on them through televisions, modems, phones and tablets. And by spying, I mean real James Bond, Inspector Gadget-style snooping, with sophisticated listening devices and human technicians on the other end.
The truth is more prosaic and more frightening. Big Brother doesn’t need to listen without our consent — we give it away ourselves every time we scroll past the legalese on a new app and click “allow.” Real people aren’t monitoring us; algorithms are.
Not that consumers have much choice. Manoush Zomorodi, writing for Time magazine in 2017, notes that it would take around 76 hours annually to read the plethora of user agreements we are subjected to. Declining the privacy invasion means declining the app, and who wants to do that?
Some of the companies affected by Apple’s renewed emphasis on privacy are crying foul. They anticipate revenue streams and knowledge of our browsing habits will dry up.
Facebook is especially miffed. All those pictures of kids and dogs and quizzes about what your favorite dessert says about your personality add up to significant information for CEO Mark Zuckerberg to hock on the downlow.
But nothing Apple is doing is new or revolutionary. The company has just taken tools tucked away in the bowels of its operating system and made them more prominent. The fear among big companies is that more of us will use these tools to close the blinds.
I plan to start clicking “Ask App not to Track” more often than I click “Allow.” At least until it limits how much I can accomplish with a given app.
When functionality goes away, I might find myself back on the Great Data-Giveaway Train. I suspect a lot of other people will be riding with me. This is both a comfort and a caution.
As Izaak Walton says, “Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter.” It sounds like the message on a fortune cookie, maybe with an ad for a travel agency on the back.
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
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