But you don't. You have only control over the former. History has shown us time and time again you don't have control over the latter.

I agree. My point is that it doesn't make sense to say "I'm not really concerned with privacy issues, I give lots of personal data to several services and it improves my life." Because that's effectively saying "I'm not concerned with privacy issues as long as my privacy is really good."

How do you have control over the former?

Data is being gleamed about you even if you aren't using their products, and it's being used by companies you haven't authorized all the time.

Our legal structure needs to catch up and punish companies who use data that we did not authorize. Data should be seen as personal property.

That will never meaningfully happen, because it is contrary to third party doctrine and would make it impossible to do business with people.

If you tell me that you like bananas, and I bring you bananas, I'm not being unethical. The problem with online services is that you're baring your soul to the eye of sauron without realizing what it means. The only way to win is not to play.

You may want to look into the EU GDPR, which requires all companies to strictly manage all personal information, or face a penalty of up to 5% of worldwide turnover.

This is set to activate in a year, and it is a huge problem for software used in the EU because almost nobody is ready for it.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Data_Protection_Regu...

I didn't say complete control. That's... well... not actually possible (ever, since time began really, if someone can see you they can track data about you).

But you can have reasonable control of it and you can't with the latter.

I would extremely argue the term reasonable.