Your Privacy Is Tested With Every Click You Make Dan Herrick/iStockphoto Why should activating a site's privacy control settings require a graduate degree in tiny print? WHEN you write a post on Facebook about your sudden craving for blue cheese, an advertisement for gout prevention might suddenly pop up on your page. Post the phrase "bacon tidbits," and you might get an ad for a book called "Forbidden Lessons in a Kabul Guesthouse." The robots are watching us. They're announcing to the world that we just looked at Eames chairs on Pinterest and that we've listened to Taylor Swift and Conway Twitty on Spotify. They're sending us ads labeled "Being Conservative in South Carolina" simply because we checked our e-mail in Charleston. They're broadcasting the fact that we just read an article called "How to Satisfy Your Partner in Bed." They're trumpeting - with an undue amount of enthusiasm - that we just scored 6 points on Words With Friends for making the word "cat." When Facebook bought Instagram, the social photo app for iPhone and Android devices, on April 9, a chorus of concern emanated from the Twittersphere: Facebook would have access to Instagram users" uploaded photos. Would that photo of Aunt Letty in her bathing suit suddenly show up in an ad for embolism stockings? Granted, some of these invasions of privacy are the result of our not having correctly wrangled an app's privacy control settings. But when did privacy become a choice rather than a given? And why does slogging through a new app's voluminous terms of service or figuring out how to activate a site's privacy control settings sometimes feel as if it requires a graduate degree in tiny print? Yes, the Obama administration has rallied for a privacy bill of rights that would give consumers more control over the online data that is collected about them, and many people in the tech industries support a do-not-track mechanism that would let users opt out of having some, but not all, companies keep data about our online activities. But the slightly creepy, Big Brother-like invasions of our privacy continue apace. You can't sunbathe nude in this backyard without constantly looking over your shoulder. Kate Rezucha, manager of internal communications for the San Francisco-based Esurance, absentmindedly replied "yes" to a question about Yahoo while on LinkedIn last year. LinkedIn e-mailed everyone in Ms. Rezucha's Yahoo address book to say that she had invited them to join the site. "It e-mailed my doctor, my dentist, my tax preparer - and a number of ex-boyfriends whose addresses I kept for who-knows-what-reason," she said. Guys I really did not want to have thinking I was reaching out to them. But the worst part was all the people who took the time to reply to me personally with their rationale about why they didn't want to join LinkedIn, or worse, asking me what LinkedIn is. You'd think I'd sent out chain mail with the threat that if it's not forwarded you'll have really, really bad luck. The comedian Sasheer Zamata's experience was even more jarring. She recently replaced her colleague Justin Purnell as host and producer of "School Night," a weekly variety show at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater in New York. When Ms. Zamata posted on her Tumblr site, "Dear Everyone, U.C.B. People, and Anyone Else Who Cares: Justin Purnell recently passed the School Night keys to me," her Twitter feed, which is linked to her Tumblr, cut the message off after the word "passed." A chorus of concern and disapproval erupted from Ms. Zamata's friends, who posted messages like "UNCOOL, SASHEER." Ms. Zamata said, "What was supposed to be a nice message turned into a mini freak-out session." She added: "It's not when I was in high school and you had to wait until you were out of class to spread a rumor. Nowadays, your business could be spread before you even get a chance to put your panties back on. Indeed, interrupted love is a tender spot for the temporality of the ethersphere: the ghostly forces of the Internet can wreak especial havoc for people who have recently gone through a breakup or divorce. Your Gmail account might ask you if you want to include your ex as a recipient of the e-mail you're sending. Facebook - even if your ex has deleted his account and then started a new one - might keep asking you if you want to friend him. Anna McCarthy, an associate professor at New York University and author of "The Citizen Machine: Governing by Television in 1950"s America," said, "It can be galling to look at the "customers also bought" feature on Amazon.com and see that your book has been paired with a book by the person who stole your ex." Henry Alford is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and the author of "Would It Kill You to Stop Doing That?"