New smartphone tech: Can privacy make a comeback?

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — Before I end an online shopping session, I search for these three items:

-- Intake Manifold for Chevy 350 Small Block.

-- 2800mA Replacement Battery for Samsung Galaxy S5.

-- Nike Air Force 1 Mens Basketball Shoe.

I don’t want any of it. But I search for them so that the next time I open a web page in a meeting or at a coffee shop, the people around me will see follow-up ads offering those three things – and not what I really was shopping for.

I’m not trying to hide anything nefarious. It’s nothing more than a dysfunctional little stunt I devised to take back a little sliver of my ever-waning privacy. Pathetic, really.

Maybe I got a chuckle out of you. But I’ll bet my last dollar that I struck a nerve. Indeed, survey after survey says that we’re essentially freaking out about the growing mounds of data about us, and that it’s conspiring to make our privacy so darn alienable.

There’s a second-layer wrinkle here, and it’s about compartmentalizing our privacy. We all have sides that we show to some circles but conceal from others. For example, I don’t want business associates to know that on the weekends my friends and I … I’m not going to tell you!

It doesn’t even have to be on that scale. Right now, for instance, I don’t want a stray ad showing my girlfriend what I’m eyeing for her birthday. (Though I do want credit for shopping ahead.)

A couple of new Android smartphones may hold the key to regaining control over who knows what about us. Start-up Turing Robotic Industries today begins selling the Turing Phone, which the company says is both unbreakable and unhackable. Silent Circle, another young secure phone supplier, has been focusing on the compartmentalization issue. The company’s Blackphone 2, the follow-on to the start-up’s groundbreaking Blackphone, hides your personal data and apps from your work stuff, and visa versa. The Blackphone 2 will be available in September.

Silent Circle built the initial Blackphone for privacy-minded consumers, but found that enterprise buyers are far more willing to pay. So the company has been adding features to appeal to IT. This week, in fact, Silent Circle announced the Blackphone 2 will support Google’s new Android for Work program, which adds security management tools to the mobile operating system.

I wouldn’t be surprised to see more products crop up that appeal to corporations that want to protect their data. And the technology will spill over into consumer products, which in turn would empower those of us who want to take control over who sees what – which, studies say, is just about all of us.

A few examples of some new compartmentalizing technology that makes this all possible:

-- Secure Spaces, from Graphite Software, is an OS-level tool that lets you create multiple virtual phones on an Android device. Silent Circle, in fact, incorporates Secure Spaces into its Blackphone series. Enterprise buyers can create separate work and home phones on the same device.

-- OmniShield is a new chip-level technology from Imagination Technologies that gives its customers the ability to build multiple containers that operate separately on the same piece of hardware. It can even give containers exclusive control over some hardware resources. To help prevent people from copying movies, for example, a set-top box builder might put a streaming app like Netflix, for example, in a separate container from the USB drive.

-- Start-up CUPP Computing is building what amounts to a smartphone on a SD card. Companies with BYOD policies can put their environment on the card, and employees can turn their personal phones into work phones by inserting the card. The two environments don’t see each other. And when you remove the card, you have your personal phone back just the way it was.

Whether they know it or not, technologies like these could be a lifesaver for the myriad companies lusting after the vast potential of the Internet of Things.

Because many of us will resist outfitting our homes and vehicles with dozens of connected devices – all with the capability to collect and report new data about us – if we don’t feel like we can control who sees what. So those markets would be much smaller as a result.

By now, the benefit to consumers of these new compartmentalization technologies should be crystal clear. Keep private what you want to keep private. It has the potential to make us all feel comfortable about what we’re exposing to whom. And I, for one, won’t ever have to shop for an intake manifold again.

Follow USA TODAY columnist Mike Feibus on Twitter: @MikeFeibus