Privacy

When signing up for anything online people are often concerned with the privacy of their information. I know whenever I buy something and put my credit card information in I get really scared that that information will get leaked. That is very common concern among people. There is much more information people should be concern with when plugging their information in online. People often do not realize how much information they are giving away to other people. Once we go online it seems as if our private lives are now open to the whole world. Last week I wrote about my online foot print and the information that people know about me through the stuff I put out. In reality there are things that I do not even write about myself that people and companies can find out. Data about me is released all the time I even consent to it sometimes without even knowing. It is very scary that my online life is not private. I may make my account private but if I look through my friends and followers I do not even know some of them personally. I think people, myself included, need to look into how “private” our online lives are. 

Facebook is talked about a lot when talking about privacy issues. A couple of weeks ago I did a project on Facebook. Ever since they started they have had many legal cases involving privacy of their users. I watched this video from The New York Times explaining all the information that Facebook gathers from their users. It is scary, and I encourage you to watch it. You might think your life is private on Facebook because you clicked “make my account private” but it is not. Either the word privacy needs to change its definition, or we need to take action in improving our privacy online. Click here to watch the video.