Privacy On & Offline

 2/16/2022

Privacy On & Offline

There is no privacy in the Digital Age at all. Everything we put online lives on forever, even after we are gone. Watching Darieth Chisolm's Ted Talk really proves the point that after we post or take a picture of anything on the internet, the content is no longer private. Anyone can access what you have done on the internet, everything you do leaves your digital footprints behind. That is a scary idea in itself considering all of the "privacy" measures our social media accounts that create this false sense of security in the photos we take, media we save, and messages we share. 

Not only are these conversations, images, etc, not really private; they can be used against us too. Mentioned above, Chisolm talks about how revenge porn almost ruined her. Even after the initial website was taken down, the explicit images her ex had posted remain on the internet, and will forever. Obviously, she cannot control her ex, but it is extremely disgusting and upsetting to think that these photos of her will live on forever on the internet without her permission. 

Taking a look at another Ted Talk about privacy in this day and age yet again proves how our supposedly private conversations are not. Christopher Stoghoian's Ted Talk touches on how our conversations we have on the phone are being wiretapped. Our phone companies systems can be hacked, leading to our phones possibly being wiretapped, and our conversations being listened too. But with modern phones, the phone companies can encrypt our devices, making it harder to wiretap, which leads to governments being upset. Many government officials feel like they should have the right to be able to access the private conversations, emails, and etc. that many are having in their countries as a safety precaution. 

These privacy issues effect all of us, when we accept cookies on a website or post something on the internet, we lose a piece of our privacy. Specifically speaking, this effects me every time I have a conversation with someone that I believe is private. I find it utterly disturbing to think that someone could be listening on my mom and I as we talk about what is going on in our family. I am not quite sure how I feel about government involvement on these issues. On one hand I feel like it is a total invasion of privacy if they are listening to everything we say; but on the other I feel like with them listening, it could stop a terrorist attack or something of that nature.  Things we can do to protect ourselves of privacy invasions are not accepting cookies on websites or using a fake email for spam. With so much going on in the world today, privacy should be something we take very seriously.