Google Knows I Have Cancer
Well, certainly. The first panicked days I was all over the Google machine, trying to learn as much as I could. I highly recommend this, as I learned enough to know my first lab coat experience was inept. For the searches, I used “incognito” mode on my Mac and Firefox Focus on the iPad. Both promise ‘private browsing,’ but I forgot one key principle: Everyone knows your IP.
I first learned this when my wife started getting ads for sleep apnea treatment on her Facebook page. She doesn’t have sleep apnea, though. I do. And I don’t use Facebook. But we share an IP, and my health information, gleaned from my searches, was sold to target advertisements to applications with that IP address.
I suppose it’s almost automatic to connect my IP with my home address, name, and other Googleable information about my household. My interactions with the web and the hidden marketing algorithms now carry a cancer ‘tag.’
Hey, let’s keep those pre-existing conditions for health insurance, please. Always a good idea, now just a bit more personal.
What I wasn’t ready for, but should have been: Google knows what type of cancer I have. Do you ever run silly searches? Hearkening back to idle curiousity that began with such questions as: “Mom, why don’t fish blink?” For the past few months, I’ve been mildly obsessive about being outside — working…
