The Data Privacy Myth

My tryst with the Assistant..

‘Walls have ears’ is a proverb that has long been forgotten. The new adage should be ‘There is no such thing as privacy!’ Having said that I would like to state that I am a technologically-handicapped Civil engineer whose only active exposure to IT is through Google, Facebook and Instagram – not necessarily in that order. I am one of those who has to check my social media pages every few minutes to ascertain that nothing major has happened in the last few minutes I was out of touch with the ‘World’. What if Trump and Kim Jong Un decide to become friends and shake hands and I am not one of the first few people to know about it on this planet!

I often tell my husband, “If Google were a guy, I would have married him!” Not because I have some weird form of technophilia, but because Google really listens! All of us know how difficult it is to find a person who just listens and does not judge you based on your deepest and darkest secrets and is happy to assist you with your parlor bookings and is with you 24x7. Now that is a lifetime commitment until death do us apart. It is a fairy tale ending for sure!

My phone gallery is usually flooded with a plethora of selfies, famfies and friendfies (pardon me for trying to be a neologist here!) in addition to the pictures that really matter when I take a trip down the memory lane. So every day my Google assistant (Doesn’t it feel good to say “my assistant”? It sure makes me feel important!) kindly prepares a collage of those sweet memories organized chronologically and laid out in an aesthetic fashion. She also prepares videos at times with the montage of these pictures with music added in the background. No one, I mean, no one can resist these sweet gestures that the assistant throws at you in an attempt to cheer you up. But I must say, she is not always successful. When it is good to see how your little bundle of joy has grown over the years in a fast forward mode, it doesn’t feel that great to see yourself looking thinner and with better hair last year than now!

Even in those moments of melancholy, we only go back to the assistant for a well-researched read up on ‘How to lose face fat’ or ‘Home remedies for better hair’. And ever obliging, she pulls out millions of articles in under a second only for us to read the first few articles and lose interest in the whole thing altogether. This sudden disinterest is not because she has not done a good job, but she did a much better job of putting up some ads for you about that holiday you have been trying to plan for ages or those gorgeous red stilettoes you have been eyeing at that online shopping site last week. How on earth does she know what you need to be doing at exactly that point of time! Uncanny, Isn’t it?

Another important member of the Google family, the Google map, the little guide who can take you (to) places, literally! My day has never started if I have not checked the tiny map on my smart phone whether I will beat the traffic today and be in office on time for that important meeting. And the same ritual is repeated in the evening when I check the map to see when I will reach home later that night and mentally calculate how many hours of sleep I will get before starting the cycle once again the next day. But there are times the map person gets a little naughty and makes me try out different routes to get to the same place. Notwithstanding the long roundabout routes and cul-de-sacs I have ended up at because of his cheekiness, he also has the nerve to ask me to rate the route so that others are not affected if it turned out to be a bad one. Such a magnanimity, I say!

Sometimes, my Google Assistant, in an attempt to please me, goes a little overboard. One day I happened to check what Priyanka Chopra was wearing for the Oscar party. Now not a day goes by without me getting a detailed discourse on what she wears, where she is, who she is with, what she says on Twitter, what she posts on Instagram and so on. Many a times, I have wanted to scream at my Google assistant, “Will you give me a break, please!” but to no avail.

All these rants aside, Google and its kith and kin have been a part of many a sweet memories of mine and I know there is no escaping it in the near future. All I can do is tell myself ‘Except your thoughts, nothing else is private. For now!’ Let me now go catch what my friend Mr.Sundar Pitchai has to say about Google Duplex and how that is going to fulfil my already full life.