Anyone who knows me will tell you I am a pretty open person. I wear my dirty laundry on my sleeve and I am very outspoken. I allow my location to be known on most Internet sites and usually agree to accepting email alerts on things that interest me.

However, I do find that as I get older my privacy has become more precious to me. I spend many hours alone reading and writing. I no longer answer calls on our landlines, which are solicitations nine times out of ten. For some reason I don’t mind countless emails that are called “spam” because it takes just minutes to delete a few hundred. Every so often, I actually learn something from some random person.

What I don’t necessarily like is when the phone companies sell my personal information about locations, travel, and websites I’ve visited to marketers without allowing me to share in the revenue they generate for it. Is there nothing sacred anymore? Cellphone carriers can track our every move.

The Wall Street Journal recently noted that when a Verizon Wireless customer navigates to a website on his or her smartphone, that information may end up as a data point in a product called Precision Market Insights. When you click on the WSJ story, it will probably take you to a page where it says in order to read the story, you have to be a subscriber. If that happens, I will be happy to cut and paste the story in an email for you. Let me know.

“The product, which Verizon launched in October 2012 after trial runs, offers businesses like malls, stadiums and billboard owners statistics about the activities and backgrounds of cellphone users in particular locations. Carriers acknowledge the sensitivity of the data. But as advertisers and marketers seek more detailed info about potential customers and the telecom industry seeks new streams of revenue amid a maturing cellphone market, big companies have started to tiptoe in. The companies say they don’t sell data about individuals but rather about groups of people. Privacy advocates say the law permits them to do so. In 2011, Verizon sent notices to customers saying they may use their data in this way.”

Meanwhile, Americans who participate in social media disclose their locations on Twitter, Facebook, and Foursquare all the time. If ultimate privacy is a big concern for you, I suggest you visit every site you deal with and look for the area where you can control your privacy settings.

If you are too lazy to go through this process, then you will suffer from electronic spam. It is only going to get worse.