What geeks, privacy activists and conspiracy theorists knew for years became apparent to the rest of the internet-opiated masses a few weeks ago: Practically nothing we do online is really ‘secure’. Thanks to the steady stream of documents leaked by 29-year-old National Security Agency (NSA) contract employee Edward Snowden to The Guardian and The Washington Post newspapers, the world now knows that the governments of the USA and four of its ally countries (the UK, New Zealand, Australia and Canada, collectively nicknamed ‘Five Eyes’) have almost unfettered visibility into the user data of mega technology companies like Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo and Apple.
The US has slapped multiple charges on Snowden under its Espionage Act. Newspapers, security experts and internet users are furiously debating whether he is a whistleblower, hero, spy or traitor, playing into the hands of governments who would rather their citizens don’t ask too many questions about why they are being spied upon.
Ironically, India, considered to be somewhat of an ally to the US, was among the top five countries on which the NSA had accumulated most data. Around the same time it became known that our own government was kicking off a mass surveillance project of its own called ‘Central Monitoring System’, which would eavesdrop and record our telephone calls, emails and usage of social networking services.
So, being an Indian online is quite the pits. Our data is being spied on by both Western governments as well as our own. This is a great time to start getting rational about technology.
The rise of ‘free’ web services during the past decade, from email to data storage to social networking, has allowed tens of millions of Indians to connect with people around the world using just their PCs or smartphones and an internet connection. But what we hadn’t realised—or perhaps we ignored it—is the much-repeated cliché: If you’re not paying for the product, you are the product.
From Google’s search engine to Yahoo’s email to Facebook’s social network to Microsoft’s Skype, they’re collecting a constant and growing stream of information about your work, life, interests and usage patterns. This data is stored in foreign countries on massive server farms, very well guarded physically, but subject to highly evolved algorithms that detect patterns from your profile and behaviour that can then be used to (in most cases) better target advertising on you.
Overreaching governments—and nasty hackers—too realise the mother lode that sits within these servers. So, instead of targeting individual users, they find it much more worthwhile to access the servers of big web companies.
There’s not much you can do about that, really. Because that’s one of the hidden costs of ‘free’.
If you don’t want to be spied upon, the only way out is to start taking more active control of your online technology usage, perhaps even—the horror!—by starting to pay for them.
Check out our Festive offers upto Rs.1000/- off website prices on subscriptions + Gift card worth Rs 500/- from Eatbetterco.com. Click here to know more.
(This story appears in the 09 August, 2013 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)