Privacy is hard to come by these days. There is no more knocking on someone's door to surprise them- they saw you on the Ring camera 100 feet before you approached the door. You can no longer talk privately with your best friend about her breakup without Alexa suggesting the cheapest ice cream options nearby. I cannot go to a party anymore without waking up the next day and finding myself in the background of dozens of photos posted on the internet, looking regrettable. And don't even think about holding a secret because soon enough, the super sleuths of the internet will piece together information about you from the past six months to conclude that you are now working with the Illuminati. Too much?
Lack of privacy due to the newest technologies can help and hurt us. It is helpful because I can share my location with my friends and family so they can always find me in case I am in danger. It is also helpful to know what is going on in the lives of people you know- since it is all exposed. But the negatives outweigh the positives. By inserting your phone number to register your email address, people can now contact you that you never knew. By letting Google track your location, hackers can find where you are. Having a teddy bear that monitors your children with a built-in camera can be their recipe for kidnapping my creepy coders. I think we can do more to protect ourselves from these privacy invasions. We tend to trust our resources too much- by inserting our email addresses to a new website just because we were asked to. Well, what else is linked to that email? My credit card information, my contacts, my phone number, my location, etc. People need to realize just how much they are giving away. By doing these small acts that seem harmless just to get a coupon code or become a member of Sam's Club, we are exposing parts of our lives that should be more private.
I think the government should be doing a better job of protecting its citizen's privacy rather than invading it with incessant questions and numbers designed for each person. Although lack of privacy is good for tracking criminals, it is not good visa versa. It is becoming far too simple to find someone you want to find. For example, I ran the track team in high school and there were lots of boys from neighboring schools that my teammates found attractive. After all, who doesn't love an athlete? All I needed to find their future husband was the name of their school. Then, I'd search for the roster of the track team and match the photo to the person. I did not need a name or number. Once I found their photo, their complete athletic history was posted along with their name. We used the name to find the social media accounts and the rest was history. Going up to him and introducing ourselves? No thanks. This lack of privacy worked in our favor, but maybe not in his.
So what can we do to better protect ourselves from being tracked and attacked by advertisements and internet weirdos? For starters, we can create fake accounts under mysterious names when registering for memberships. We can also clear our search histories, turn our locations off, and unsubscribe from old subscriptions with old information. We can also never have credit card information or passwords pre-saved to devices to make our lives "easier." It won't be so easy once we get hacked!
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