Privacy has become a relic of the last century

I had a business meeting with someone recently and casually mentioned I was a bit messy.

I know, she said without any embarrassment, “I Googled you before coming.”

I wasn’t that surprised, because I Googled her, too. We live in a transparent era, where we know more about people before meeting them than we used to know when we married them.

Welcome to the overinformation age, where there are few secrets and armies of electronic spies.

Facebook knows what you like and dislike, who your friends are and what they like. Google knows what you Google, ogle, email and order online for dinner.

Your TV isn’t the “idiot box” of childhood now that it’s a smart TV tracking your favourite shows, channels and music tastes to send off to advertisers.

It gets more up-close and personal. In recent years, more than 150 million personal fitness trackers are recording our footsteps walked, calories burned, hours slept, breaths taken and heartbeats pounded — and often sharing them with the manufacturers.

They know your heart’s condition better than you do.

Then there’s your cellphone, an in-pocket spy that rats on your location all day, like a detective hired to tail you. Lately, when you use your phone’s nifty new voice-recognition apps, it also records you, then relays whatever you say to a server somewhere or other.

The latest spies in your home are working for the Internet of Eavesdropping Things: everything from your voice-recognition smart-fridge to your Internet-linked thermostat/ lighting system — which knows exactly when you turn up your bedroom’s heat and dim the lights.

Someday, your voice-recognition fridge may

The latest spies in your home are working for the Internet of Eavesdropping Things: everything from your voice-recognition smart-fridge to your Internet-linked thermostat/ lighting system — which knows exactly when you turn up your bedroom’s heat and dim the lights. Josh Freed

The FBI already has half of Americans in its facial-recognition bank,

testify against you about a bank robbery you plotted in your kitchen while it was silently recording.

It gets even more personal. Japanese smart toilets have been hacked and remotely controlled by strangers who flushed them repeatedly and flipped the toilet seats.

Yet, even this is just the dawn of the overinformation age. Facial-recognition technology is now getting scarily accurate and will soon be spotting our face in every crowd.

The FBI already has half of Americans in its facial-recognition bank, using their drivers’ licences — and eventually, Canadian security and big stores will, too.

In-store cameras will spot you walking by that 40-slice, self-buttering toaster they know you like from your Google search history — then the gadget will send you a personal text as you near.

“Josh, I know you want me. Take me! I’ll butter up a bagel that melts in your mouth and makes you forget that cheap KitchenAid relic you live with today.”

Oh, did I mention that face-reading, liedetector technology can now analyze 100 points around your eyes, mouth and brow to detect if you’re lying. So the real estate agent will soon know what you’re thinking when you make that “final” offer.

The entire concept of privacy seems doomed to be a quaint relic of the 20th century. So what can you do to protect your privacy while you still have any? The first defence is a password so complex no one can hack it, including you. A typical online privacy site advises: “Construct your password from a sentence, then mix in some uppercase letters and a number.”

For example: “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” — which becomes ‘aoOPiwaPoC62’. But make sure to change it every month.

You can also dumb down your spying smart TV by ripping out the Internet cables and only watching bad network TV. Better yet, just stop using the Internet altogether — I mean, do you really need it?

Finally, read a print newspaper like the one you are holding now. It’s the last thing you can do that you’re sure no one is tracking.