You are not just your data

SF Gate columnist Mark Morford offers a, um, rather intense "sanity check" for those worried about compromising their privacy when they take part in the online economy:

This is the gist. I have left an enormous e-trail of purchases and site visits and account data. My credit card number is lodged in a hundred different company servers, if not more. I have doubtlessly generated some sort of meta-profile somewhere that indicates which ads I'd like to see more of and which products might interest me and I'm probably the target of a thousand advertisers who think they can reach me in some significant or profound way.

But this is what gets lost in the morass of e-commerce and credit cards and alarmist privacy concerns: They cannot touch me. They cannot actually reach me in any significant manner, ever. I am protected and secure and absolutely, thoroughly immune, forever. And you know what? So are you.