The ability for an advertiser to know everything about you – what you like, where you shop, what you buy, where you are and who your friends are – is reality today. Take a look around you, and you’ll see people with smart phones everywhere, logging into Foursquare or Facebook, telling their friends what’s new and cool. The problem is that none of this data is yours anymore. Well, it’s yours, but none of it is private to you. It’s all being collected, collated, and filed away, to build a more perfect profile of who you are and how to market to that profile. The Wall Street Journal recently published a very accessible investigate reporting story on the issue – it’s worth a read. Now. Drop what you are doing and read it.

In short, advertisers are the new Big Brother. Our personal lives have been losing the “personal” but since we started using email (where our thoughts were stored on other people’s hard drives) – but this is a whole new level. Facebook knows when you’ll break up with someone, Foursquare knows where you like to hang out, and Google knows… well, everything. Especially if you’ve turned on the browsing history.

In most cases, we are at least somewhat aware of the new level of tracking. Orwell however, must be spinning in his grave.