Privacy, Online & Off

 

These issues affect everyone.  Me, my friends, my family, they know everything about us.  What cars we drive, our license plate numbers, and therefore they know about wherever we drive.  This is scary because why do the police need this information about us when we aren't doing anything wrong.  The answer is that they don't.  

Many people use social media.  This is an easy way to access our information.  We post everything about ourselves, like the schools we go to, where we live, and who we are friends with.  To be on these apps though we pay a price.  Our information is being stored and sold to third parties and we are constantly being strategically advertised to.  They know everything about us in order to make money and make sure we stay engaged with these apps.  Facebook is a large contributor to something called data mining. This is something that we usually agree to in the terms and conditions.  

Telephone companies have built in surveillance features into our calls.  Someone could be listening at any time.  It could be our government, but it could also be a stalker, a terrorist group, or another government.  The problem with this is that not secure networks can be hacked by whoever wants to do that.  We need more privacy when it comes to our calls, texts, and general information.  We need to protect our information and use more secure networks. 

The government needs to be growing with the times.  New laws and bills need to be passed because as society evolves, so must our government.  Misinformation, deep fakes, and hacking are evolving and this poses a risk if we do not keep with the times.  Without laws and regulations, it becomes more and more difficult to protect ourselves.  In the mean time, to protect ourselves we can educate ourselves on what types of technology are the most private and do our best to use those. Examples of this would be instead of using a regular phone call, use a FaceTime audio call because they cannot be tapped as easily.