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12 Aug, 2013

The backlash begins: I want to shop where no one knows my name

By Diana Elliott

Is it seriously possible to do anything anonymously these days? Shop assistants ask me my name before letting me use the change room. If I buy something, I’m asked for my home address, email and birthday so they can put me on their ”mailing list” (spam). And then the most ignominious of all – my utility company calls me and they demand I identify myself to them so they can inform me I’m two weeks late paying my bill. WTF?

I can’t even trawl most news websites now without revealing who I am, so I’m forever paranoid that some data-sweeping broom is collecting stats on all my visits and is one day going to publish a manifesto saying I have a tendency to click on things that involve Jon Hamm, climate change and caveman diets, not necessarily in that order. And here I was trying to pretend I’m all intellectual and stuff, reading Matters of Great Import and Consequence.

Read the rest: I want to shop where no one knows my name – Sydney Morning Herald.