And as a matter of fact concepts like TOR and VPN should be the norm in mainstream computing and not the exception.
I will for the moment abandon arguing for private web browsing, although that really should be commonplace.
But VPN? (Virtual Private Network) or a similar equivalent should really be THE most common way for us to access our information. What should be happening is that instead of your info being on some cloud service with Apple, Google, or Microsoft... all that private data, pics, docs, habits, personal assistant history and profile should all be held LOCALLY on your own primary home computer. Since a large percentage of us have broadband internet, it’s no big deal to run our own personal cloud.
There should be open standards for this.
We should be able to do 99% of the things that our favorite apps do without compromising our habits or identities AT ALL. Because our surfing should be private if we pay for it, and our personal info should live on our own encrypted private networks run from our own homes.
THAT would be privacy. Does anyone see any real meaninful push for this? No. While you can find bits and pieces of such services and if you are highly computer savvy you can go to all the trouble to have some of this yourself, there are no real turnkey solutions for the average user that provide full personal cloud services between phone, tablet, laptop, desktop, media player.
There are other ways for technology to work for us that can keep our lives private, besides the ways the big data carriers are trying to sell us.
It’s past time for the general public to lean a little about this topic and wake up. Demand something different and better for privacy.