I was lucky enough to grab a simple version of my name for an email address. The downside of this is that I receive a lot of carelessly misaddressed emails to other people who share my first and last name. I've found that people (and institutions who should absolutely know better) fire off the most amazing things over email without even bothering to make sure they have the right address.

I finally tracked down the Sharon in Birmingham to let her know that her temple had the wrong email on the mail distribution for the Gift Shop Committee and I was receiving all her meeting minutes - including financial details of the operation of the gift shop. I've also gotten legal papers related to real estate transactions for a different Sharon. But the worst breach of security common sense was today's arrival:

Dear Sharona ,

At CityMD we are committed to making managing your health as simple as possible. As a CityMD patient, you now have the opportunity to access our new patient portal.

With the CityMD patient portal, you will be able to:

• View your visit summary


• Confidentially access labs and test results


• Access your records 24 hours a day, 7 days a week

Please use the followin to login:

followed by a login and a password in clear text!! What are these idiots THINKING, sending sensitive information like that to an unverified email address? They should be sued. Of course this email came from a no-reply address, so I can't even do what I usually do - reply to the email with a polite note that it was sent to the wrong email. 

Obviously and unambiguously. I would think this whole thing was a joke if someone in MY VERY HOUSEHOLD didn't see it as blue and black.

As we slither down the slippery slope to a post-privacy world, it gets trickier and trickier to figure out when to be outraged, when to be slightly unsettled, and when to just shrug and say "and so it goes."  Almost everything that Facebook does outrages me, because their explicitly stated business plan outrages me (and they are pretty consistent about implementing features that move them towards that goal). I am more kindly disposed towards Google and Amazon because I have found both of them so useful, but they're making me increasingly nervous too. Here are some questions I am currently pondering.

• Would I care if comments I made on Facebook about a product were used in ads for that product targeted at my "friends?"   [Yes]


• Would it be even worse if Facebook used my picture in these ads? [Yes. Fortunately I'm not on Facebook]


• Does it make a difference that for the purposes of this discussion, "product" can include political candidates? [Not sure. In some ways I'd rather have my paltry personal influence used to support "my" candidates than to sell consumer products.]


• Do I care if my online shopping patterns are tracked and used to present me with targeted adverts? [No, at least so far. Right now I'm just finding it funny, as I am now seeing advertisements EVERYWHERE for a product I have already purchased]


• Do I want my online search results "informed" by the opinions of "friends" on social media? [Hell, no! Bing is horrifying.]


• Are facial recognition algorithms creepy?  [Yes, especially combined with all those Facebook initiatives to "monetize" their user base.  On the other hand, it's really cool when I'm using it to sort my digital pictures in the privacy of my own computer. Split decision.]


• Is Twitter inherently evil? If not, is it good for anything that I care about?   [decision still out]