Online Privacy: How Safe Are You?
Digital privacy is very important because it is the same as privacy in the real world. How would you like to have someone looking in your window 24/7 and taking note of everything you do? You wouldn’t right? That is exactly what digital privacy is. When there is no digital privacy, then you can essentially have someone or a program watch your every move and take note of it. That is why the government has created laws against big corporations collecting data from your online activity. They may not have stopped it entirely, however they have limited what these corporations can do. This is the same thing as the court case Lawrence Vs. Texas that prohibits the government from watching you in your own private home without a warrant. Even if they do watch you without a warrant, you can get off by saying that the evidence was not collected through a legal manner. I was very surprised by the amount of companies that are still allowed to collect our data and use it to influence our decisions and make money off of us. That is alarming in my opinion.
I shared an article by the Wall Street Journal above that explains the situation with the popular social media app TikTok. There have been claims that among other things, TikTok has been collecting the location of your internet source and the most recent thing you have copied and pasted. This is very alarming as some people may have things that they do not want others to see on their copy and paste clipboard. It does not seem like such a big deal to your physical safety but it could pose a threat to your online safety. You are leaving a footprint that you did not intend to leave initially. The other big threat to you is that this is a Chinese owned app and they do not have the same laws about privacy that we do. The app may sell the data it collected to other companies to do all sorts of things. Even the president has called this collection of data a “Threat to National Security”.
All in all, I believe that digital privacy is a matter to take into your own hands. If you believe it is necessary there are many VPNs (Virtual Private Networks) that can encrypt your data and prevent it from being collected and connected to you. This could be very helpful as the future becomes more and more technological and your online activity becomes more and more personal. When I first heard of this weeks topic, I immediately thought of a South Park episode. In this episode they were making fun of the privacy agreement apple has us sign for each new IOS update. The irony was that no one talks about these agreements and one of the main characters just assumed that no one ever read them as he doesn’t. So he agreed to something very foul and could not get himself out of it until bad things had already happened. Everyone else had read the privacy agreement and wondered why he would agree to such a horrible thing. They did not understand how someone couldn’t read the agreement. That was the ironic part as I have never met someone who has read those terms and agreements. It was both funny and scary at the same time and it makes me wonder what I have agreed to in some of these terms and conditions.