I wanted to check out Apple’s new social media thing, Ping, so I downloaded the new version of iTunes and installed it. I turned the service on and it brought me to an account setup screen that displayed my first and last name in form fields with the message:

The name you enter is also the name associated with your account’s billing information. Any previous reviews that you have written with a nickname will now display the name you list here instead of that nickname. To remove any reviews you have written from the iTunes Store, go to your account and click Manage Reviews.

Not only is it eroding your privacy and forcing you to use your real name for things you had previously done under a username/pseudonym, but it’s retroactively pinning your real name to things you had previously done under a username.

That’s not acceptable. Anybody who wrote a review did so with the understanding that their personal information was anonymous. In my case, the two are close enough that it doesn’t really matter one way or the other, but for a lot of other people it does.

And look, I get that Facebook uses real names and everybody wants to get on the Facebook bandwagon and, OMG, you could attach a much higher dollar value to my profile if you could associate it with me the person instead of me the random anonymous user. But you know what, fuck you. I’m not here to service your bottom line.

So I guess what I’m saying is, I probably won’t be using Ping.

p.s. This is my instant reaction. I reserve the right to calm down later but I doubt I’ll change my position. I’m just getting fed up with companies constantly trying to extract more and more of my information for their use.