When Does the Internet Become Too Invasive?
Amanda Cey | February 12, 2010The new website Bundle allows you to see, in friendly, colored-bubble format, how people in your region are spending money on things like shopping, travel and leisure, house and home, health and family, and transportation. We put in our local area and found out that people are spending $649 (per month) on food and drink. After this, you can click “go deeper,” at which point Bundle breaks it down further – people are spending $298 on dining out, and $351 on groceries. Click “get stats” and it will tell you exactly where people are spending those $298: in our area, at Starbucks, Chili’s, Round Table and Peet’s, among others. And while this is definitely interesting for our notoriously voyeuristic society (reality TV, anyone?) and perhaps even useful (you can use others’ spending in your area to more accurately access yours in comparison), is it also too much? Bundle uses Citi credit card data in addition to third party information to be privy to what most people would consider to be very private information. It’s just one example in a long list of uses for the internet that straddle the line between interesting and invasive: GoogleMaps is useful to find where you’re going and check it out on Street View beforehand, but many have protested that Street View is an infringement of their privacy, and perhaps even a threat to their safety. While Bundle isn’t threatening – no one can see where you’re specifically spending your money – is it heading in that direction? Do you think the internet is leading to an utter loss of privacy? What point do you think pushes the boundaries too far?











Difficult issue. Buzz moves a mail platform into a new social networking tool. I always admired Google in view of their search spirit. However here I oppose. My life is in the present juncture a majour threat. Nevertheless Google began taking serious the privacy concerns, Buzz nevertheless requires to overcome its burden. the people at Google seem to be playing with human data. Google has to do some better argumentation about its succeeding moves.