New Delhi, April 18 -- Writing on technology in the early 2000s, the creepy thought occurred to me that we would eventually have a generation of users who didn't even recognize the concept of privacy in the digital world. It was when cookies and website tracking were going mainstream. They started out innocently, because if a website didn't find a way to remember you, even a shopping cart wouldn't work. You would have to keep starting over.

Unfortunately, users were and still are relentlessly tracked wherever they go online, as they became commodities or numbers for a marketing target. Technology began to nibble away at users' privacy. I didn't realize then that this was only the beginning of the end. As AI becomes woven into the fabric ...