The Importance of Data Privacy
November 20th, 2020 by Behartheja Thondapi and Jae Lee
Theja's thoughts:
Watching all these videos made me realize just how unsafe I am on the web. In the videos every time something to not do on the internet was mentioned, I found myself shaking my head. Before watching the videos I thought saving passwords on the browser was fine and I was safe. But after watching I was embarrassed because I also saved my credit card information. I was a pokemon go player. After watching the video I deleted the app. At the end of finishing all of the videos my phone and my laptop were quite a few apps to say the least. This combined with the documentary social dilemma was an eye opener. I had made the decision to delete all of my saved passwords and delete tiktok. This saddened me because of how much I love the app.
Regardless I realized it had to be done. Along with all the changes I listed above I made the switch from google to firefox. I will no longer be using google chrome or facebook. As you can see this project truly opened my eyes as to just how bad my practices were online. It has taught me to never just randomly browse. But instead only be on the web when necessary or with a purpose. I used to spend quite a lot of time online and posted quite a bit on social media. Hopefully my expressions were not sold to china. All in all very informative project and fun to do.
Jae's thoughts:
Started from the massive growth of the internet and now we are living in the time of history that individuals and companies cannot function without the internet. Whenever we log on to our computers or a website directly linked to our personal information sometimes as valuable as our credit card numbers. For companies it can lead to quite a disaster if one does not follow the correct guidelines and regulations enforcing data privacy. Since customers rely on the companies and entrust them with valuable personal data to inform ourselves about how data privacy is enforced is crucial. Personally, looking at the resources I was a bit creeped out by how the internet opens access for the government and companies to access my personal data. I believe I heard about the rumors thinking of it as conspiracy theory.
The main reason I have trouble believing this is because I was not aware of the value of private data and information. I guess more I think about it more uneasy and bothered I am without a definite way of doing something about it. We all know that if it has been done at all for someone’s gain then it would mean the same thing is happening non-stop every second of our lives right at our fingertips. Therefore, I am not quite sure know how to feel about this information. I usually keep in mind of telling myself I am not special and there’s probably hundreds of people who have way worse internet search history than me. After all, to me, some AI stealing my information to create my virtual profile to analyze sound about the same as the risk of socializing in the real world and being a target to be taken advantage of.
