I am not a tech person, and I have neither a Facebook nor Twitter account, so the topic this month is somewhat out of my comfort zone. I have never understood the urge by some people to divulge every aspect of their personal lives online, but the ability of social media companies to track every communication and transaction and to develop a database for each user is, or should be, alarming to everyone regardless of their decision to use social media or their political views. All that said, I will admit I am conflicted about this topic. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other services are extraordinarily popular because people want the services they provide. As a free-market advocate, I applaud the entrepreneurship that has made these companies successful, and I appreciate that the founders of these companies are modern-day visionaries. Like many others, however, I have concerns about overreach. Leaving aside for this column recent data on the unhealthy "addiction" by many users to social media and the efforts by those companies to promote greater and greater use by ever-younger customers, the involvement of these companies in our electoral process demonstrates once again that politics has penetrated every aspect of our lives.

The recent furor over Cambridge Analytica should come as no surprise. Political operatives have long understood the power of accessing information collected from the internet. In an interview in 2013, Maxine Waters explained that the Obama administration had put together a database having "information about everything on every individual in ways that have never been done before…"

Not coincidentally, according to White House visitor logs Johanna Shelton, director of public policy for Google, visited Obama White House officials over 120 times. I do not think any journalist ever bothered to ask the Google representative exactly who she was meeting with or why, but on June 20, 2013, the New York Times ran an article that heaped praise on "The Obama Campaign's Digital Masterminds" who had collected and used internet data successfully in their primary campaign against Hillary Clinton. We all have reason to fear the power these companies wield, and how the information they control can be sold and used, apparently without restriction. Although there are laws and regulations that screen and limit the sale or transfer of sensitive technology to foreign powers, it seems there are no safeguards on the sale or transfer of information on American citizens to those who seek to exploit such information, whether foreign or domestic.

While the problem is obvious, the correct course of action is not. It is a precarious balancing act to allow social media sites the freedom to provide the services that customers want, but at the same time put effective limits on the use of information these sites solicit and collect in ever more subtle ways. As recent Congressional hearings demonstrated, companies such as Facebook have not only been ineffective safeguarding data but worse, their internal policies have allowed practices such as shadow banning and shadow blocking to censor speech with which they disagree. Trusting the government to impartially divine the correct answer, however, is also betting on a long shot, a few legislators have the technical knowledge to address cutting-edge advances in information technology. Moreover, the federal government's recent history is no better than the private sector social media companies when it comes to protecting data, as demonstrated by the government's failure to protect and its misuse of information gathered by agencies such as the IRS, the FBI, the OPM and the NSA.

We live now in an information age, and as is often the case, our laws cannot keep pace with technology. You should pay close attention to this issue, participate in the political process by voting and paying close attention to candidates' positions, and write to your representatives expressing your concerns about this important issue. Whether or not the government acts, you should consider limiting the amount of personal information you share on line. There is power in limiting what these companies know about you.