Protecting Your Online Privacy

     More and more, technology is slowly taking over our lives. As the years go on, technology has advanced to the point where everyday tasks can now be done with the click of a button. As human beings, our privacy is something that we expect to be kept, well, private. As technology develops, so does the risk of our information being exposed. The internet is fantastic; it makes research easy, it makes getting answers convenient. 

    

    In recent years, Facebook has come under fire for selling user information to companies. When it came down to it, Facebook began to use the invasion of our privacy as a business model. They did not care who got hurt as long as they make money. When you create a Facebook account, you are basically signing a "shrink-wrap" contract, where you are forced to adhere to Facebook's terms of service without having any power to negotiate. It is basically one big power struggle. In addition, Facebook makes it so that they now own anything you share or post on their platform, and they are allowed to do whatever they want with our information. Including selling our information to companies for the purpose of target advertising. With all of that said, we have also given up our right to sue Facebook because of said contract. The only thing we can do is have a "mediation" in a non-legal setting. 

    Data mining is another huge issue when it comes down to our online privacy. Nobody is safe. Data mining is done through user-generated information. This means that when you fill out your information online, data is being stored—examples of this include race, ethnicity, age, gender, even education. Overall, data miners are trying to find out as much information about you that they can find. Data mining also included tracking malware; all they want is consumer information. These people are even going as far as making "digital dossiers" about us. These dossiers include everything about us. A few years ago, Facebook experimented on millions of its users without telling them. What they did was manipulate what stories showed up on our feeds. By doing this, they wanted to see if they could manipulate our emotions. What this sounds like to me is a complete and utter violation of my privacy. 

    There are products out there that can help protect our privacy. Norton LifeLock is a well-known cybersecurity company widely known for selling a product that will protect our online privacy. Norton LifeLock is the global leader in Cyber Safety and helps protect us from the potential dangers caused by the internet. When talking about online privacy Norton’s website states, “[w]henever you download an app, visit a website or use a social media platform, chances are that company is collecting data on you. People are doing so much more online through their computers and mobile devices today. We make purchases, look up medical conditions, arrange vacations, interact with friends and relatives, just about anything imaginable. With these actions, people are inadvertently creating a huge digital paper trail of data about themselves”. Extensive research has been done to analyze what parts of our information are being collected. The heat map below is taken from a study that Norton did with researchers from Boston University. The data shown illustrates the top 12 types of private information collected by the top 20 global domains.  

Sources:

https://us.norton.com/internetsecurity-privacy-why-your-online-privacy-matters.html

https://www.nortonlifelock.com/sites/default/files/styles/blogs_inline_medium/public/2021-04/figure_2-New.jpg?itok=o7qM_L2y

https://www.nortonlifelock.com/blogs/research-group/private-information-gathered-phone