1623 i-Naked

I was reading a book in which one of the main characters was exploited in nefarious ways, thanks to her phone. Yep, she was one of those compulsive application people who had every bit of her life stored on her personal communication device.
And as a result, was naked to the world. Access to her bank accounts, pictures of her friends. Not just pictures, geo-tagged pictures, so the evildoers who highjacked her and her phone knew where to find her friends and family.
It was a scenario not too far from the truth. Private investigators know that finding out all about someone these days is totally easy. Just steal their smartphone. A couple of swipes of the finger and, voila, you've got your finger on the pulse of someone's life.
I read an interesting true story about how we do this to ourselves. A guy named Max Strems of Austria used a European law to compel Facebook to provide him with a record of all the personal data it had on him. A while later he received a CD in the mail.
It had 1,222 pages of information, including chats and "pokes". They dated all the way back to 2008. Max, it appears, was an early Facebook adopter. Loyal as it were. What we used to call a trusted client. Too bad he wasn't treated to trustworthy behavior in return.
And there's no doubt old Max used his phone to use Facebook to the max too. What's that old saying? "They won't take our freedom away, we'll give it to them." It used to be with the tag line, "...for a discount." Now it's, "...for a free app."
It also used to be, "My life's an open book."
Now it's, "My life's an open phone."
America, ya gotta love it.