Big Data: Privacy
Perhaps the most widely known fact, and widely unknown fact, about data privacy is that nothing you do is really private. Now a days, any activity a human does can be tracked or recorded which includes everything from being on different apps on your phone to watching tv to brushing your teeth and how you drive. There are even ways for your personal romantic life to be tracked through technology. As a personal belief, humans are creating a target out of themselves from big technology companies by carelessly sharing information about themselves. As a population, we have the ability to control how much big corporations and the government know about us yet we choose not to. A truly scary realization is that our smart devices, such as amazon echo’s, Alexa’s, phones, and computers not only “watch” us but create generalizations about who we are such as our age, gender, and interests. By simply making a google search, for example about a romantic fiction book or movie, the internet can display ads for items with that interest such as tickets, apps, similar books or movies, and games. The internet also has the ability to guess what gender we are from those searches. Google may assume I am a woman, even if I was a man who happened to be looking it up. One major key to keeping our privacy as private as possible is developing and using methods of direct communication. This includes limiting social media sharing, and using email servers that prevent information from being sent to ‘everyone’. Preventing anybody else from having the “keys” to our information is essential. While yes, technology will only improve and will most likely become impossible to restore entire privacy, making changes to save our privacy now is better than completely losing control over our own personal information.
