We all received that WhatsApp message and are now worried about them sharing our data with FaceBook.

Well if you look at suggestions of “People you may Know” from both FaceBook and Linked In you will notice that your email addresses contacts (even if you choose not to give access to them when they ask) are there as “People you may know”.  I started to look more carefully to understand how come people I  barely know, interact with via email only, could appear as “People I may know” in both platforms.

Interesting we now can even see the profile pictures of those who probably send you spam emails. Even them have no privacy 😂. I so concluded because once I was shocked to see a big number of people from a rough area in Rio de Janeiro as  potential people I may know. During my 2 years stay in Rio, every time I bought something in nice shops I was asked to give my email address (they do the same in the UK) and initially I gave an email address I use for trivial things. I am 100% sure this address was sold over and over based on the kind of junk mail I receive on this particular one from Brasil. I also had suggestions for people I may know, from parts of Africa a place I, at least knowingly, do not have any contacts. The good thing is you can now put a face on those who try to con you 😜. Can you imagine now where YOUR FB profile picture is showing up in the world right now? So careful with what kind of photo you put there to represent you.

But the proof to my observations, came when I formed a  WhatsApp group with people from the club back in April. I do not have these people emails, am not connected to them on FaceBook, never called them by phone, our only way to communicate is via this WhatsApp group. Within 1 month from forming the group their FB profile started to appear as “people I may know” on my profile page. I was shocked!!! Felt betrayed.

So forget about turning off the option of sharing your whats app data because FaceBook WhatsApp, Linked In and Google already know more about us than we do.

We have been reduced to robot like creatures, just following trends created to suit others interests, believing we are free like never before, but in reality we are being controlled by corporations which will, or better saying, already know if we are healthy, safe drivers, if we eat too much fat, drink a lot (supermarket cards), etc. It is not only to tailor make adverts to things we “may like” but also to provide information to those who will benefit from knowing more about our habits than ourselves so they can remove their risk of insuring those who will be a big liability and to increase profit by leading us to buy not what we want, but what they make us believe we do.

It is not all doom and gloom, it is just “progress”, innovation and changes are part of life and a sign of new times, but this progress is a strange, super fast life changing type of  progress which requires a lot of time spent on managing privacy, a right we naturally had just less than a decade ago, whilst at the same time  making us voluntarily expose ourselves and provide our most private information to faceless people.

Welcome to the future (?).