Privacy

My take is, privacy is precious. I think privacy is the last true luxury. To be able to live your life as you choose without having everyone comment on it or know about, Valerie Plame.

Does privacy still exist today in the age of social media and instant messaging services? Can we trust our private profiles in social networks (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) and share personal pictures, videos, and comments with our friends and family? Can we read, download, listen, or watch illegal or copyrighted material?

The answer is clear and simple: No! Internet privacy is a myth. It is a murky, complicated issue full of conflicting interests, misinformation, innuendo, half-truths, and blatant lies. Smartphones are highly privacy-invasive. Google, Microsoft, and Apple monitor and record a lot of what you do on your smartphone. Besides, manufactures and software developers will add their own dangerous and privacy-invasive software into the mix.

Privacy is both a human right and a necessity, and big companies, tech titans, governments, small companies, and hackers constantly attacking and diminishing our privacy has a corrosive and perversive effect on all of us. Unfortunately, there is a plethora of malware, such as ransomware, viruses, spyware, computer worms, and Trojan horses attacking our privacy. Complicating matters further are criminals, hackers, and state-affiliated individuals who break into websites, apps, services, and Wi-Fi networks steal private and sensitive information, and use it for personal, political or commercial gain.

We are living in a world where our privacy is constantly under attack. For instance, Google tracks everything about us: our IP and then filters our searches based on our web history, the keywords we type in, the ads we click on, etc. Facebook tracks all written messages, posted or not, which sites its users visit even after they log off, etc. Furthermore, all Internet Service Providers (ISP) keep a record of all our web activity, but for how long is everybody’s guess.

Social profiling is the process of constructing a user’s profile using his or her social data, and his or her smartphone and Internet activity and usage. It is more than likely to have a disproportionate negative impact on all of us.

You should consider that everything you do on-line, e.g., sending an email, writing a comment, tweet, or blog entry, uploading an image or video in your favorite social network, downloading a file, is public. The Internet has indeed killed privacy.

In addition, many people take photos or videos with their digital cameras or smartphones and post them on-line. “Any individual can be unwillingly tagged in a photo and displayed in a manner that might violate them personally in some way, and by the time Facebook gets round to taking down the photo, many people will have already had the chance to view, share, or distribute it,” Wikipedia.

There are many people who were having a good time with their friends or partners. They were drinking like a fish, smoking like a chimney, taking drugs, laughing all night, etc., and someone posted a picture or a video showing them drinking alcohol, vomiting, behaving stupidly, dancing like a fool or getting naked. These embarrassing videos or intimate photos end up in some social network or video sharing site being available to anyone, anywhere, anytime! Furthermore, deleting these photos and videos is extremely difficult after they have been posted or sent.

We are not only talking about careless people who upload images or videos of themselves and their friends drinking, doing drugs or engaging in intimate/sexual activity. We are also talking about people who intentionally upload this content in order to damage, harm, or ruin people’s life and reputation.

Cyberbullyng “includes mean text messages or emails, rumours sent by email or posted on social networking sites, and embarrassing pictures, videos, websites, or fake profiles,” StopBullying.org. Bullies can use these materials to call you names, tease, humiliate, and harass you.

What can you do about it?

Read our articles How to protect yourself and your privacy and How to protect yourself and your privacy II