There’s no such thing as a free lunch

Fly fishing by JR Hartley, remember that advert for the Yellow Pages? What a lovely way for Yellow Pages to sell their services to us, as a conduit to human happiness.

Twenty years on I’m sure few people would use the yellow pages for such a search, preferring to use the internet.

What has this got to do with technology I hear you mutter into your Granola?

Yes folks it’s my usual clumsy way of trying to extol the value of technology and the positive effect it can bring to our lives, so here we go.

The internet is great isn’t it! There is very little information that we cannot find out given a few hours (or even minutes) and a search engine. I recently spent some time in front my computer with my technology phobic 87 year old Granddad looking up members from his regiment in WWII. He was amazed when these names from the past came up on the screen in front of him, for so long just vague memories. Given a few more minutes and the inclination, we could have found current addresses, and possibly phone numbers so Pt James Sadler could get in contact with these people he shared such a life changing experience with.

Right there and then if I was a salesman I could have sold him a laptop, broadband, and a multitude of other services, his eyes were so wide with astonishment and disbelief, for him it was a true ‘JR Hartley’ moment. Alas I’m not and besides you can’t do that to family, right!

Unfortunately as we all know there’s no such thing as a free lunch, and in return for these amazing possibilities the internet has given us, we must enter into our ‘digital life’ with our eyes wide open. There’s no need for fear and paranoia however, we just need to understand what we’re trading in for our ‘free lunch’.

So who’s paying?
Well, the internet providers and search providers that’s who, and the biggest of them all rhymes with bugle. Bugle, started to appear on our screens at the start of this century, originally developed by two very clever chaps from Stanford University, Larry Page and Sergey Brin. They had developed a revolutionary way to search the internet far faster than any other product available at the time.

Larry and Sergey’ second master stroke was how they then became one of the biggest companies in the world. Using complex programming they were able to assure potential advertisers that their products could be directly marketed to potential customers. Advertisers signed up in their millions and that is why, if you look at your Google page, on the right hand side of the screen there are products that relate to you and your interests and recent searches.. as if by magic.

So going back to that wet sunday with my Granddad, when I typed in “Royal Sussex regiment” what happened? As well as some very useful results being returned to me Google (other search providers do exactly the same) was able to ‘log’ what I had searched for, so the next time I used their product amazingly there were links to Ancestry sites, British Forces sites etc etc. You can imagine just how valuable that would be to companies selling their wares.

So that’s the pay off, you get to use an amazingly complicated efficient piece of technology but in return you are subject to being directly targeted for advertising. Its not such a bad trade off I suppose.

These same companies have access to an awful lot of your information on the internet, however there are no “oompa lumpa” type computer operators looking at your internet search habits.  Rest assured it is all just complex computer algorithms responsible for the direct marketing. No one at Bugle, Wahoo or GT has the time or inclination to wonder why you were looking for the actor who played the milkman in “George and Mildred episode 1...”

Rich’s Tip:
Limit the amount of personal information you enter into websites, especially unfamiliar ones.

Read instructions on the screen, Windows especially likes to put big exclamation marks on harmless information messages so make sure you read what it is actually saying to you.

Also there has been a spate of people phoning vulnerable computer users purporting to be from “Windows support” or companies with a similar name, please be assured that these people are trying to scam you. Microsoft is a huge company but still not big enough to spend time phoning Mrs Miggins in Small Dole.

Keep em peeled

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