Ever wonder what happens to the information that you put online? Because I know I do. I'm almost constantly thinking about if I should be using this app, or giving another one these permissions, and this book really worked to minimize my fears. Though it does read a little like a textbook, and I couldn't really get into it until about the half way point, I did really enjoy it when I was finished.

Check out my full review here!

https://radioactivebookreviews.wordpress.com/2019/02/19/the-identity-trade-selli... ( )

We are obsessed with privacy. Or rather, we obsess about privacy while sitting idling by as it is nibbled away. In The Identity Trade, Nora Draper examines the companies trying to cash in on this anxiety, offering small bits of protection for what remains of privacy. They are a cynical response to a sea change in life with tech.

Privacy is one of those negative rights, like freedom from unreasonable search. It is not something you can exercise on your own, leverage in the performance of your life, or influence others with - like, say freedom of speech, press or religion. Privacy is forever under attack and in need of defense after you learn it has been abused, ignored or removed. About the only thing you can do with privacy is lose it.

An entire industry has grown around failing privacy. There are reputation management services, anonymizers, search engine results manipulators, cryptography services – all playing on fear. Fear starts early, as students worry about getting into universities when their social media posts are checked. There is job application worry, promotion worry, bullying, harassment, ID theft, targeted ads, doxxing and hacking. It’s all about fear, and you are supposed to pay to alleviate some of it. They are all small, weak patches on a massive problem. But the book is not about how crazy this all is. The book is a survey of these services, how they differ from each other and why, according to their founders. As if they were legitimate and beneficial.

It is a dry catalog of a book. There are precious few human stories, and just one image -a couple of screen captures from a commercial. But the worst thing is that Draper seems largely unaffected by it. She has no opinion or analysis of the services, the morality of their operations, or how perverted it makes our society. She is just a neutral observer, unmoved, apparently, with no ideas of her own.

But the truly annoying thing about The Identity Trade is that Draper seems to assume the privacy state of affairs is acceptable as is and just needs nurturing and clarifying as we layer on more such faux fixes. She never takes the position or challenges her interviewees that this is all morally if not legally wrong.

I realize this is “just” a book review, but let me tell you what I think, reinforced by reading this book. There should be a non-profit data warehouse that links to all the personal data there is. The owners of the data are the named individuals of the world. They all offer their data for rent in five levels: copper, bronze, silver, gold and platinum. Copper provides basic data like name address, family, email and such. Bronze layers in employment history, academic record and previous addresses. Higher levels add credit card purchases, health records, social media posts and geotracking from mobiles and health trackers. Individuals can make available for rent as little or as much as they want using these universal layers.

If a company wants to create demographics or psychographics, it can rent a million accounts for a week or a month or a year. The individuals get the rent. But the customer can’t sell that personal data to anyone else. Just like you can’t sell your e-book to a friend, even though it’s in your account, you can see it on the screen and you paid for it in full.

The most amazing abuse of this kind is credit scoring, which has become not only acceptable, but necessary. The ratings agencies collect data on everyone without their knowledge or consent, and companies can look at it if they’re subscribers. You were not able to see your own record of your own financial transactions until a law passed forcing them to make it available free at least once a year. Same goes for your health records; you have no right to even see them, let alone possess them, despite their being totally intimate details of your private and personal condition. This makes a total farce of the right to privacy. So the very fundamentals of privacy need to be straightened out.

And none of this can take place until and unless there is a law that says no company can sell anyone’s personal data without agreement and compensation. Because everything else is theft or extortion. And always has been. It’s time we acknowledged that.

This would have made The Identity Trade a much more worthwhile read. But Draper doesn’t go anywhere near it or any other consideration.

David Wineberg ( )

If you're not paying for an (online) product, you're the product. Every day we make choices that influence our online visibility, reputation, and identity. The Identity Trade examines the relationship between online visibility and privacy, and the politics of identity and self-presentation in the digital age. Author Nora A. Draper interviewed entrepreneurs and industry representatives on their products and services, the way existing (online) identities can be strengthened or destroyed.

Draper investigated the ever-moving world of reputation influencers, anonymizers, search engine optimization (SEO), and the impact of algorithms. Some businesses failed, some morphed into other ventures, few survived the span of two decades that's covered in this book. Can ethics and business live alongside? Who owns my data? Who buys and sells it? Do we really care about privacy? A series of niche players are showcased in depth, where I would expect more well-known brands and consumer-oriented tech companies. ( )