Internet Privacy

By You-Lan(Ginny), Liu

Have you thought about what you are giving away when you are using the internet for “free”? Because of the innovation of technology, we have a lot more sources that we have access to comparing to the times that internet was not existed. People usually assume that using internet is free when they are browsing for things online or watching videos online or using social media. Most people thought they can get all the information for free online. However, that is not the case. What we are giving up to the free information is our privacy and our personal information.

First of all, why we should take the security of our privacy and personal information online that serious? Because people can know a lot about you from the information that you are giving away, and they can do a lot of things based on the information that you give them. For example, there was a dating website called Ashley Madison whose database was hacked by a group of hackers who called themselves “The Impact Team”  in 2015. Since this dating website is specially offered to people who is looking for extramarital affairs, most of the users chose to use this website for its anonymous. However, the company’s database was hacked, and all the user information was published, and that includes their real name, email address, home address, and even sexual preferences. Because of the unethical purpose of using this website, the users whose information was disclosed had suffered a lot from the society critics. Therefore, we should always pay attention to what we are giving away, and what we are allowing people to know about us.

Moreover, do you know that everyone’s search result is different based on each individual’s browsing history? Do you notice that preserving browsing history is one of the default setting that Google has? What does that really matter for an individual? It means what you found online are usually biased and selective points of view; it means you do not often find information that other people have access to. For example, in the article, “Google Search Hyper-visibility as a Means of Rendering Black Women and Girls Invisible”, the author mentions that if you search up “black girl” on Google, some people has a higher chance of getting negative information than others based on their previous browsing history. If you are a Republican, the search result you found are most like to be different from the search result that a Democrat has. The craziest thing about this is that we are only given result with limited point of view, and most of us still believe that we have access to all the information.

Furthermore, do you know that Facebook now has the right to use your picture that you posted on your wall for advertising purpose? Giving our personal information away is the cost that we are paying for the “free information”. In the movie, “The Circle”, the company invented a small camera claiming that can save thousands of lives with its going live function. It seems extremely efficient when it comes to searching for criminals, but what if ordinary people started using this tool to stalk somebody else? Do you still have control of your personal information? Most likely not. And this is the price that you are paying for obtaining the “free information.”

To sum up, internet privacy is not just a tiny issue that should be ignored. If we do not take this problem seriously, it is going to be much severed to the point that we can never resolve. Not only problems like data breach, but also getting limited point of view, and having our personal information exposed.

 

REFERENCE

Andrew Duffy, Ottawa CitizenMore from Andrew Duffy, Ottawa Citizen. “Ottawa victims of Ashley Madison data breach not eligible for U.S. settlement.” Ottawa Citizen. N.p., 17 July 2017. Web.

 

Author, IVC . “Google Search: Hyper-visibility as a Means of Rendering Black Women and Girls Invisible.” InVisible Culture. N.p., n.d. Web.

 

“Inside the World of Big Data.” The New York Times. The New York Times, 03 Oct. 2013. Web.