Privacy On and Offline

     Although I was always aware of our technologies accessing our information, I didn't realize how much of it I was truly unaware of. After watching Andy Yen's Ted Talk, I was able to fully grasp how websites are taking advantage of us. Yen spoke specifically about how easily our emails can be accessed. Emails contain extremely private information and knowing how easily it can be accessed by anyone is scary. There is also no simple solution to this problem. Although privacy seems pretty easy in principle, with the business of these companies it is nearly impossible to achieve. These websites make as much as $137 billion dollars in advertising in a single year. These are profits that these companies are not going to be willing to give up for their users privacy. With all of that being said, your privacy being violated by companies seems to be inevitable as long as you are using these technologies to communicate.

    This is something that affects almost everyone. The information that is taken from you is done as a means of building a business rather than caring for consumers. An even sadder fact is that companies intentionally hide this information from you. Although it is almost always stated in user agreement policies, those policies contain pages upon pages of useless information that nobody bothers to read. When technologies that take our information like this were first invented advertised what data of ours they would have access to and what they would use it for, significantly less people would have joined in the first place. This information is gradually becoming more accessible to people but so many people are still unaware of exactly what their digital footprint really contains.

When using the internet, if you want to protect your privacy it is important to take measures to do so. Using secure passwords, signing out of the browsers you are using, and keeping your devices locked are a few ways to do so. Until there are more regulations and ways for users to securely use the internet without a breach of information, it is up to users to figure out for themselves how to keep their privacy protected.