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Privacy

 Are things private anymore?

Internet privacy is always a hot topic. People have strong opinions if your social media accounts should be public or private. I remember my college professors would lecture us about making sure all our social media accounts were private. They would say as an educator families shouldn’t be able to see your accounts and potential employers shouldn’t either. They would give us ideas to remove our last names from social media and replace it with our middle names to make it more difficult to find us. To this day I still have my accounts set to private without my last name. However, how private is that still?  There is also way more to privacy than someone just finding you on the internet. What about the website itself?


My friends and I always talk about how our phones must be listening to us. I find myself talking about something and then there is a Facebook ad about it!  We question how much privacy do we really have? I think learning about internet privacy is important because we are in a world where the internet is changing fast. We often sign up for social media and just click agree to the terms and conditions.Just today I was looking up things to eat for lunch. I ended up on the Arby’s website. On the bottom of the screen a privacy notice came up and without reading any further into it, I just clicked “okay”. I would love to learn more about this type of thing.  We should be more diligent about  protecting our privacy.  

Facebook Has Access to What!?

Image Source: Buffer

I am a big Facebook person. I use facebook a lot to stay connected with my family friends. It is where I share a majority of my pictures and any big life events. Facebook always has ads for me to see and suckers me into buying something I have been eyeing for a while. Buzzfeed shares how this is possible. Facebook tracks your browsing history. Even though you are not on the Facebook app, Facebook has access to what you have viewed on other websites. There is not an option to turn this feature off, it would only make your data anonymous. 


I feel like I knew that Facebook did this because of the amount of ads I see that I am interested in. What surprises  me is the fact you can’t turn it off this setting.  We should have the right to turn it off even if the data will be anonymous. Even if the data is anonymous they are still collecting something from you which takes from your privacy. 


Alexa… Stop Listening to Me!

Image Source: Amazon

Similar to Facebook, Alexa is also gathering information from you. However, it isn’t looking at our browsing history, it is listening to our conversations in the comfort of our own homes. “The company says it does so in order to improve the accuracy of the software’s future responses” (Alaimo, 2019). This means it uses your conversations so when you say “Alexa” it is able to form a response. This does make sense as all companies and software want to be as up to date as they can. However, CNN shares Alexa may be using the conversations for more than just that. They can use the information they hear to learn things about you. It can learn when you buy things, things you like, and more. Alexa and amazon can then use these things in a negative way. At the time of the article all information Alexa gathers is private but can change at any time according to CNN. 

 This is so scary to me! Alexa is supposed to be something in our home that helps make our day to day lives easier. It helps me set timers, make grocery lists, and play music. Now to learn that Alexa is listening to me all the time makes me feel uneasy. I should be able to talk about whatever I want in the privacy of my own home with my family. My initial response is to get rid of my Alexa. However maybe I will move it into a room we don’t use a lot or have conversation in often. It also makes me want to learn more about what other websites or devices I have that could be invading my privacy and what I can do to protect myself. 


I Want My Privacy! 


After reading about two things that I use almost daily invading my privacy, I wanted to learn about some things I can do to help protect myself. I read an article on GeeksforGeeks about some ways to protect your online privacy. They shared 10 ways you can protect yourself. I am going to share 3 that I am going to try out! 

  1. Using a Private Browser 

If you browse the internet on a private or anonymous browser it can help limit the cookies and data being shared by websites (Gfg, 2019). When the browser cannot access your cookies and data you won’t see as many ads that are aimed for you. The cookies and data from the website help gather this information about you. Therefore if you limit them, other websites can’t use them to make ads for you.  I have an iphone and typically use Safari as my browser. Safari on iPhones gives you the option to browse privately.


  1. Avoid using any public storage

When you store documents and information on sites like Google Drive or Dropbox, those companies have access to that information. I am very guilty of storing important information on Google Drive as it is a convenient place to keep everything organized. I am going to try saving things to my computer rather than to Google Drive. I can then put it onto an external storage. That way it is not easily accessible inside Google. 


  1. Say No to Cookies

I am not talking about chocolate chip cookies. I am talking about the cookies that every website asks you for permission for! Cookies again are what is taken from you from a website to gather information about you based on your browsing history (Gfg 2019). Luckily, if you use Google Chrome you can turn this off! All you have to do is go to your privacy settings on Chrome and turn the setting off. This should then deplete the amount of cookies websites take from you. 



I hope you are able to take 1 of these tips and implement them right away to help your privacy! Which one would you try first?


References 

Alaimo, K. (2019, April 26). Perspectives: The real danger of Alexa listening to our convos | CNN business. CNN. https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/26/perspectives/amazon-echo-listening-alaimo/index.html 

GfG. (2019, October 15). 10 tips to protect your online data privacy in 2019. GeeksforGeeks. https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/10-tips-to-protect-your-online-data-privacy-in-2019/ 

Nguyen, N., & Mac, R. (2019, August 20). You can finally see all of the info Facebook collected about you from other websites. BuzzFeed News. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/nicolenguyen/off-facebook-activity-feature-clear-history?utm_source=like2buy.curalate.com&crl8_id=ecb7bb2c-2eef-40a6-9e09-85dd0fa6d286
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