Post #4: Privacy = Violated

Technology as a whole is an excellent source of communication to stay in touch with friends and family. Without it, we wouldn't be able to receive updates about the latest information and news occurring in the world on a day-to-day basis. 

But like anything else, there is no doubt that technology definitely comes with its flaws, the biggest being an invasion of privacy. 

How do these issues affect you? Your friends and family?

The invasion of privacy issues raised in these videos affect not only me, but my friends and family too in ways that are very scary. The fact that the in-person conversations that I have with others are always listened in on by the government through my phone or other source of technology is honestly frightening. It leaves me scared whenever I mention wanting to buy, for example, a new pair of shoes and then suddenly an ad for the same pair of shoes appear on Facebook. 

I feel uncomfortable that my privacy is continuously violated everyday, whether it be the government constantly listening or hackers making their way into my social media accounts and pretending to be me to my followers in order to get their information too. 

I also found it interesting that in the video with Juan Enriquez he brings up the idea of digital tattoos. Digital tattoos shape your reputation depending on the digital footprint you leave online. Enriquez compares physical, body tattoos to that of digital tattoos and argues that they provide as much information for a person as body tattoos ever could. A common way of contributing to your digital footprint is through allowing a website to install cookies on your device. 

A protest back in 2014 to fight back against government surveillance.
 

What should the government be doing about these issues?

To help in improving privacy issues, the government should implement more regulations on companies like Google Home and Amazon Alexa that are other sources of technology that are always listening to people's conversations. Such regulations should be laws that protect individual data privacy, require companies to only collect data for their own purposes, and most importantly spread awareness to educate the public about the dangers of privacy invasion. 

What can we do to protect ourselves from invasions of our privacy?

Although the problem of invasion of privacy will probably never be fully resolved, we can ensure we are protected as citizens by making our social media accounts private instead of public and installing software like two-factor authentication and other authenticator apps so people can't hack our personal accounts.

 

These apps make it to where you need extra stuff to log into your accounts, making it almost impossible for people to be able to hack your accounts even if they have your password. 

As a society, we must demand for more laws and regulations regarding technological privacy as it is a right that everyone deserves to have as human beings.