I saw an article the other day on BGR that talked about how the Google Maps app on your smartphone tracks everywhere you’ve been, unless you turn off location tracking. I followed the steps in the article and discovered that, through some fluke, I had already turned off location tracking which means that as far as Google Maps knows, I’ve never been anywhere.

It’s no real comfort, though, because other apps on my phone know where I am. I’ve set my Cineplex app to order the theatres by proximity to my current location. Same with Starbucks and Indigo. My banking app is set that way, and even Pizza 73. It’s mostly a matter of convenience for me, but it’s also a way for companies (and people, too) to track where I am and what I’m doing.

Facebook gives me sponsored posts and “Things I Might Like” based on my activity on the site. Twitter suggests users for me to follow based on who I follow and who they follow, and sometimes just because. Even Goodreads (which is linked to my facebook account because I can’t for the life of me remember my password) has ads targeted to my browsing history.

And I find it very uncomfortable.

I don’t check in on Foursquare, and I don’t let Twitter or Instagram announce my location when I post something, and I am often intentionally vague when talking about my home on the internet, because people who don’t know where I live don’t need to know. I keep most pictures of myself as private as can be done while still maintaining an online presence.

I realize the futility of trying to remain anonymous online, but I also know that I do want to keep certain things about my life private so I try not to overshare.

I’m just fortunate that I am able to make that choice.

Earlier today, a number of nude photos of a number of young female celebrities were leaked online, leading to a conversation about whether or not these women, by virtue of having these photos taken and stored on their phones, “deserved” to have their photos made public.

The answer, of course, is no.

A person’s wealth and ‘status’ in society should not be reason for the rest of us to treat them like subhumans. We have this horrid habit of fetishizing our interest in celebrities to the point that we delight in their downfalls because then they seem more like us. But even if someone who lives their life in the public eye falls from grace, so to speak, it isn’t our place to judge whether or not what they’re doing is “right”. If we treated celebrities as human beings, or at least imagined them as such, we’d begin to recognize in them their similarities to us – or to our loved ones. But instead, we dehumanize them and treat them as commodities to be enjoyed and thrown away.

All I’ve really learned from watching this unfold on Twitter is that it is not difficult for me to lose my faith in people. The reactions from the basement-dwellers of that online community shouldn’t have surprised me, but for some reason I thought it’d be different this time. Instead, I see people making threats against women for speaking out about how the viewing and sharing of these images is tantamout to assault (which it is). I don’t see the value in actively violating someone’s privacy with the sole intent to embarrass them for a choice that they made.

Instead of worrying about which celebrity has a sex tape or nude photos floating around, maybe we need to take a look at our notion of privacy and decide whether or not we’re okay with our every action being tracked. I suspect that a number of people who so loudly opposed Facebook’s Messenger app and it’s privacy violations weren’t as quick to condemn the sharing of these photos.

Unfortunately, it’s a different world than even the one I grew up in. And I don’t necessarily think that’s for the better.