Internet worries.

I occasionally find small nuggets of joy in flicking through the outer regions of news in various apps.
I have never really been convinced by Instagram. It’s not something I use myself ...knowingly. It seems to have a mind of its own though and I find pics on it of people I know vaguely but haven’t bothered to befriend.
But yesterday was different.
Flicking idly through scenes of local beauty spots, old friends, people I’ve married in the past, christenings etc...it has never occurred to me to wonder how it knows that I have a connection to the people it features.
But yesterday was different. I found a page entitled "Anvils on line."
What? Flicking through several pages I found the solution.
The man selling the anvils was my stepson Robin, one of the few living blacksmiths .
I know how I know him but how does Instagram? We no longer share a name.
I don’t see much of Robin these days but I am still in touch obviously.....
He looks pretty rugged in the pics...
As one of the last remaining black smiths he has collected anvils and all the other heavy duty stuff needed for making things out of iron. But how does Instagram know that I know him?
During the time when the Lancashire moors were burning I worried about him and his wife because that’s where they live.
All is well now. They have had some rain thankfully but it doesn’t answer the question of how Instagram knows that photos of Robin would be of interest to me!
It’s brought the whole worry about how much we entrust to the internet without really understanding how it acquires this knowledge, back to the surface.
It’s unsettling to think that machines are collecting information you think is only known to you.
I clearly need to be much more careful.



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