Was one of the casualties of the COVID-19 pandemic, privacy?

From American Public Media, this is Marketplace Tech.

I'm Stephanie Hughes.

This week, we've been exploring the lasting impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Back in March 2020, we spoke about what might happen with futurist Amy Webb.

She's the CEO of the Future Today Strategy Group.

One prediction she made back then was that we would give up more of our personal data around things like our health and location.

And that meant privacy would go away. Then in 2021, she said on the show that privacy was dead.

We brought futurist Amy Webb back to ask, where does it stand now?

Privacy is still very much six feet underground and very, very dead. I think the key difference is it's something

we're not talking about as much anymore. You know, over the past five years, in part because of

the emergence of COVID and the quick changeover we had to make to use digital tools to continue

to stay connected. Some basic knowledge around privacy

sort of went by the wayside. And our content, our images, our voices are continually now

being scraped and repurposed. Some of that is our personal data, as is reported, you know, on this show and others.

Some of it's like deep fakes and cloned voices that are now pretty commonplace.

So what does that mean?

I mean, maybe we had a funeral for privacy, but if we did, it was quiet.

So what does it mean that we've said goodbye to it?

Look, on a sort of day-to-day level, I don't think most people sense that their lives have changed all that much.

But if you think about applying for mortgages, if you think about insurance, if you think about other aspects of your life or your personal

data, play some role in decisions that get made, that has changed. And for some people,

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