Have you had enough of Big Tech’s sinister snooping?

Last week, in the aftermath of the murder of  Colonel Arnaud Beltrame by an Islamist madman in southern France, I filed a piece, by email, to Reaction in which I made a passing reference to Napoleon. Imagine my surprise when, hours before the piece appeared online, I received an email from amazon.co.uk suggesting various books on Napoleon that I might like to read that were in line with my interest in the subject.

Two days later, a picture appeared on my Facebook page, marked, ironically, “Only you can see this,” featuring a photograph I had taken of builders working on an extension to my house in rural France. I had not posted the picture to anyone. As far as I was concerned, it was of interest only to me and my wife. How did Facebook get hold of it. What is going on?

I am not, of course, alone in my concern. Social media is under fire for its covert role in influencing public opinion over such matters as the 2016 US election and the UK’s EU referendum. But it seems to me every bit as insidious that Amazon might be tracking my emails and that Facebook can view pictures I have taken with the camera on my smartphone.

It is one thing for Amazon to recommend more books by Ian Rankin after I have ordered the latest Rebus. That is merely irritating. It is quite another for them – if this was indeed the case – to identify my interests as a result of their electronic  perusal of my personal emails. Equally, while Facebook might be excused for suggesting “friends” I might wish to enlist based on its cross-referencing of existing contacts, it is something else for it to call up pictures stored on my private phone and fire them back at me for inclusion on my timeline as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

Let me make it clear: I don’t suppose there is an individual out there somewhere, enjoying full access to my computers and other devices, whose full-time job it is to snoop on my electronic output. That would only be true if I was a celebrity, or someone important. But the fact remains, everything I do online is at some level surveilled, and anything useful extracted for commercial gain.

Even the Economist is at it, though it at least has the decency to ask first. Calling up a news item this morning that turned out to be from the magazine, I was warned that if I wished to read more than the opening paragraph, I had to agree to have my browsing history sifted through and passed on to whomsoever the Economist saw fit. Hundreds of other sites employ the same ploy: accept our “cookies” or remain in ignorance.

Well, I’ve had enough. I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore. Who’s with me? And if you are, what are we going to do about it? Because, short of cutting myself off from the twenty-first century and buying myself a Garrard autochanger, I’m stumped. Maybe I should ask Alexa.