Blog #5 - Invasion of Privacy

 It is crazy how advanced technology is in today's world. How small a camera can get and how many different companies track your every move. Something that you like or are interested in is being reported and then advertised to you to hopefully purchase. There will be times when I would say I need to pick something up at the store, then a few minutes later I will look at my phone, and that product is being advertised all across my phone. Technology is so advanced and keeps getting more and more advanced as the days go on. Soon, AI will be all over the place, and people are scared that AI will be taking over people's jobs. 

While viewing the videos, I learned so much and didn't realize how much the government tracks your every move. Logging all conversations that you have with your family and friends into a cloud. Even tracking your car to make sure it wasn't stolen or if the person is wanted for something they did. These issues impact us because our personal private information is being logged by computers to make sure we are not doing anything illegal or suspect that we are planning something bad. This could also impact you by how other people view you. Everyone is using social media today, but if you were to look yourself up on Google. You might find pictures that you might have deleted or pictures that someone else posted of you, that maybe you don't like. But you can't get rid of them because they are on the internet. In one of the videos, there is a woman named Darieth Chisolm. She talks about how her ex got revenge on her by releasing inappropriate pictures of her on a website. She was terrified of having these pictures released and available for other people to see. It took months for those pictures to come off the web, and for the ex to be handled by the proper authorities. The internet can be horrible and it's hard not being able to control what is being put out under your name. 

The government should find better solutions on how to handle certain situations or find better solutions for tracking people's phones or cars. Find a way to track only the bad people and leave the innocent people alone. The government should also create more and better laws against cyberbullying. Figure out unwanted inappropriate websites faster and be able to take them down quicker and more efficiently. Lastly, we should demand more accountability for the people posting these pictures and creating websites. 

However, to protect ourselves from the invasion of privacy, we should be more cautious about what we are posting on social media. People who are hiring you for a job look at social media pages to make sure there is nothing inappropriate that could get back to their company. Because when they hire you, you are representing their company. Also, another way to protect your privacy is maybe not accepting cookies on websites. Cookies are basically the company spying on you and selling your information to other companies. TikTok is free to purchase, but they have a net worth of $50 billion. It is because they are selling your information to other companies. It's scary, and like we talked about last class, when the first party (you) voluntarily gives information to a second party (google), the first party relinquishes all control over third-party downstream uses. You don't have control over what the second party sends to the third party, and you don't know what the second party is selling. Try to stay away from cookies and Google because Google is also storing all your information in a cloud. Find safer websites to use or try staying away from social media to protect yourself, friends, and family.