ONLINE PRIVACY

 ONLINE PRIVACY CONUNDRUM

    In the age digital technology, where all your contacts and conversations are built in to your cellular device, the concern over online privacy continues to grow. As you may know, the algorithm within certain applications like Youtube analyze your search history so that they can recommend certain videos to the user based off other videos they have watched in the past. Inherently, this seems like a great idea because it makes it easier on the user to find content that they may be looking for, however it's incredibly concerning how invasive these algorithms have turned out to be. They have all the necessary information including your age, sex, geographic location, and consent to conduct these procedures due to the user agreement when they decide to use the app. Private companies such as Youtube, Instagram, and Twitter are able to do this without government interference which makes cracking down on this issue a lot harder than one may think. You may not realize this, but allowing this much access to companies can create security issues for the user because they're agreeing to leak their information subconsciously without fully understanding what these companies are doing. For example, when you access a website and they notify you at the bottom of the screen about "accepting cookies", that's a euphemism for malware that most people wouldn't understand. When one bypasses that screen, they're merely doing it to access that website they were looking for without realizing what they just allowed the website creators to obtain. Malware is any software intentionally designed to cause disruption to a computer, server, client, or computer network, leak private information, gain unauthorized access to information or systems, deprive users access to information or which unknowingly interferes with the user's computer security and privacy.

    

The man you see on the left is Edward Snowden, a CIA intelligence contractor who was arrested for espionage in 2013 when he leaked information to the press about the NSA's data-mining programs that allowed them to track user's search history on Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, etc. Snowden is one of the most famous whistleblowers as far as technological privacy is concerned. It's important to note that Snowden had turned himself in and disclosed his name in a news feature because he genuinely felt that he hadn't done anything wrong. Snowden is one of the many activists for stricter regulations of online privacy, and many other organizations have begun to speak out on this growing issue. Personally, I don't want myself or anyone in my family to be subjected to sketchy hacking practices being done by these mega corporations, and steps need to be taken by cell phone and laptop providers in order to diminish the accessibility of private information.