American phone and Internet service provider AT&T has just launched an incredibly fast fiber-optic Internet service in Kansas City for $70 a month.
However, the news is not this: customers who do not want the telecommunications giant to spy on them during their web surfing will have to pay an additional 29 dollars.
In other words, questionable online privacy protection will cost around $350 per year.
Whether this is a bold move on the part of the company or a straightforward one, that is up to you to decide.
The question is whether such an agreement can exist. Is it fair for AT&T to force consumers to protect themselves by paying a fee?
The answer for the romantics of the internet is probably no. For others who are more rational the answer is yes. Choosing paid protection of your private life probably seems harsh, but the internet to date works this way.
Google, and Facebook for example offer “free” services that in reality are not free at all. The price is not measured in money but in our personal data.
AT&T simply does it more openly. Want protection? Pay.
In the future, it is very likely that we will see more companies doing the same.
In an era when it is now known that the internet is a large area of global gathering and information collection by secret and non-secret services, many will consider doing the same.
The question is whether they can succeed, since entire governments have failed and laws seem powerless in the new virtual environment.
Paid protection of our private life is the solution that will stop the collection of information by secret services or by advertising companies?
I don't think.
We have seen that the online world is very “open.” Nothing can be hidden, and even if it manages to do so, there will always be someone who will manage to discover a backdoor access. Apart from that, advertising companies and secret services constantly discover new ways of collecting data.
Would you pay for such a service?
