Seriously. There is essentially no other way to interpret this data from Pew Research, which emphasizes the number of people who haven’t yet realized that their photos are somewhere on the web. Much more revealing than the photo statistic is the one about “Home Address.” If you have ever had a phone line or a utility bill in your name, anywhere in the US, I would bet that your home address is freely available online unless you’ve taken affirmative measures to remove it.
You can check by visiting pipl.com. Or you can just use Google. Pipl reveals every address that I’ve ever lived at since 1997, all seven addresses, all the way back to Pasadena, CA. It’s more than a little unsettling.
I can’t help thinking that people would be a bit more concerned about the privacy implications of living in a pervasive surveillance state if they realized how much of their personal information is already published online for the whole world to see. And although Pew downplays this aspect of their “daily number,” the real take-away here is that the majority of people are simply unaware of how little privacy they actually have.
