Way back when I first got into Group Policies, which was just after Group Policies were released, one of the things we mooted about the BoF den was a simple thing we could do to tell users that they were on a managed station. What we came up with was pretty simple: manage the desktop background.
No, we didn't put an all-seeing-eye on it. That would be creepy, don't be silly. We used a logo of the company.
It made sense! A simple cue, and we'd save RAM (back in those days the desktop background took more than trivial RAM). We were happy.
It turns out, that's not how you build a happy user-base. By doing so, we told people explicitly everything you do can and will be used against you in an HR action. People don't like to be told they're being monitored.
You know who likes to be told they're being monitored like that? No one.
You know who we want to be monitored that way? Prisoners and people likely to become prisoners.
No one wants to be thought of as a prisoner, or likely to be one.
In fact, later GPO guides specifically discouraged doing things like managing the desktop background or theme. It could be done, but... why would you want to? Desktop theme is one very low impact thing on the system and the single biggest thing the user can customize to their preferences. It's a very low challenge to the system to increase user experience by a great amount. Let them customize and don't worry about it.
But still manage their IE zones, certificate enrollment policies, software distribution methods, and event-log reporting.
They can make their jail-cell a pink polka-dot wonder, far better than bare cinder-block! It's still a cell, but without that camera in their face, they're happier about living in it.
It looks like consumer-focused big-data stuff is suffering the same faults as early GPOs did: they're being too obvious about the surveillance.
"Hello, Mister ${mispronounced last name}," said the sales-clerk I'd never met before. I sighed in resignation, vowing to factory reset my cell-phone. Again. One of these days I'm just going go cash only.
Or another one I almost guarantee will happen:
TSA Customer Service
@sysadm1138 We noticed you were in DFW security line for 49 minutes. We would like some feed back about that, https://t.co/...
Er, wait. That's Big Brother. Sorry, dial slipped. Let's try again.
VIctorias Secret
@sysadm1138 We noticed you spent time in our DES MOINES, IA store. If you have time, please take a short survey about your visit. https://t.co/...
You've probably run into this one, but hitting a random website, and then that site haunts your web-ads (for those of you who don't run on AdBlock-Strict) for weeks.
They haven't figured out that a large percentage of us don't like being reminded we live in a panopticon. Give me my false illusion of anonymity and I'm happy!
It's all about the user-factors. What's good for the retailer, is not always good for their consumers. Obviously. But the best kind of thing like that are things that aren't obviously not-good for the consumer.
User-factors, people!