Chipping in on vaccines
Disclaimer: I am fully vaccinated and it might be the chip making me write this article. If you notice any bug, please report it to Mr. Gates.
It’s been over a year and a half since all this started. Covid-19 pandemic, lockdowns, sickness, suffering, enormous numbers of death throughout the world, countless families affected… and finally — vaccines! People are worried. They have every right to be. But some people are worried for all the wrong reasons…
Ever since the first vaccine was officially authorized* by the FDA, a lot of conspiracy theories came up. Some more ridiculous than other. Among all of them, the one where Bill Gates is the protagonist and the presumption is that the vaccines are, in fact, implanting microchips in our bodies truly baffled me. For people who willingly submit their data all over the Internet, it seems to me we are a bit too worried about vaccines. Let me tell you a little story:
John Doe is your average human being. John owns a smartphone, which he carries in his pocket wherever he goes. His smartwatch tracks his sleep, his workouts and his every movement. John uses a lot of social media — Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Snapchat and whatnot. Few times a week, John shops at his nearest supermarket, using a credit card to pay for his groceries. John also has a discount card at that very supermarket. At checkout, he also uses his cashback card to get a few dollars back.
John also thinks that vaccines are… problematic. On the Internet he read that someone wants him to get vaccinated and then implant a chip in his body, so that he can track his every movement.
It’s not much of a story, I know. But, does it sound familiar? All of us have at least one “John” in our lives. What John doesn’t know is that he already has that ‘chip’ implanted. Only, it’s not under his skin, but rather in his pocket. The smartphones we carry around with us all the time have enough information about us, we don’t need any microchips. We willingly submit all that data to the highest bidder. I guess most of you reading this use at least one social media. Have you ever read the tens of pages long ‘Terms and Conditions’ agreement? Do you know which of your data is used and for what purpose?
Did this ever happen to you — You talk with a friend about some product and later that day, there is an advertisement about that very same product in your news feed? It happens. And no, they are not listening to your conversation. The big companies just have enough data to connect everything and present you with an ad you might be interested in. Where did they get that data? You gave it to them. Willingly.
You and your friend were in proximity for a longer period of time. Your friend recommended a product that you were interested in and then it showed up as an advertisement? It’s not a coincidence. Much like John, you probably use your personal info at random locations to get some small benefits, and so does your friend. What’s the harm?
For example, if we combine your shopping history with your friend’s shopping history and add the fact that you saw each other for a couple of hours, advertising companies can conclude that you and your friend share some interests and you might be interested in something he/she bought/liked. It’s just an algorithm. This algorithm will fail without enough data, but it has all the data it needs.
Your personal data alone, as an individual, is useless to companies. But when combined with millions of other individual’s data, its priceless. Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos and all the others tech giants, they don’t need you to take a vaccine in order to be able to track you and get more data from you. They already have everything they need. You gave it to them.
Don’t overthink this. The pandemic is still raging, as we are being hit with a whole Greek alphabet of mutations, the vaccines are the only way out of this. Get your jabs, protect yourself as much as you can. The vaccines are our hope to get over this, not the problem.
To be clear, I am nothing and nobody in the medical community — this article is just my own opinion. I am a software engineer and my hopes are that one day, I will be something and somebody in the software engineering community. However, as an Android developer I’ve had a chance to work on different Android applications and analyze some popular applications. I don’t like what I see, I don’t like how much user data is being used and I don’t like how it’s being used. I am hoping that in the future I will be able to help improve on this aspect, but for now, if you are looking for something that might be threatening your privacy, look in your pocket, not at your shoulder.
Stay safe :)
