Privacy, On and Off the Internet

 Blog #8

Privacy, on and off the internet

    When it comes to our safety with technology, it is not as safe as we might find it to be. Majority of the people who have cellphones, computers, or any other type of device do not realize the dangers that come with owning equipment as such. Companies pay these people to watch and look over us, without us even knowing or agreeing at times. 

When watching some of the TED Talk videos provided to us, the particular video that gave me the most interesting information was a talk done by Juan Enriquez. In this video, he mentions how computers, cellphones, and any personal technology we have takes "face tattoos" of us. Once our pictures or videos get put into the technology, it is 84 - 94% accurate of recognizing us. Recently in 2012, he shared that a company called Face.com, that has about 18 billion faces online, was sold to Facebook. This means that the app Facebook, has everyone of those faces on that site and there's in their systems to trace and recognize. 

Catherine Crump, one of the other speakers in the TED Talk videos mentions how we are not always safe even doing everyday things, like driving cars. She mentions how the newly programed license plate cameras take pictures of every car that passes by, and tracks that car to see how Americans interact. They can track wether you go to church, a certain restaurant, if you are picking up your kids from school, and anything else you might do that day. Yes, they have said that these cameras are to pick up the plates incase an emergency occurs, but now they are tracking peoples lives, which is not always safe for us. 

These issues can affect my family, friends, and other due to our safety in this country, or the world in fact. Most of the population these days in on social media, or on the internet somehow, and even if you do not have a social media account, your technology still knows who you are, and what you do everyday. In my opinion, the Government should not be allowing all of this to happen. There are some freighting people out in this world that can now find your face, location, hobbies; with just a few searches. In order to protect ourselves from invasions of privacy, we all just need to learn how to keep most things private and not share what we do not need to. As an example, if you post pictures on Instagram, no need to put the location of where you are, or take a picture in front of your house. Believe it or not, websites collect that data, and can find where you are, who you were with, and what were you doing, in seconds.    

Second EOTO

 Blog post #2 about EOTO

                                      Misinformation / Disinformation

    Personally, I believe each EOTO this time around was very interesting and they all tied together in some aspect, but the one that caught my eye the most was the conversation around misinformation and disinformation. In today's society, it is very common for people to believe things that are said because they want too or do not know everything on the topic. This is a problem because rarely anyone does deep research into issues anymore, and just uses what they see or hear as backup for their arguments. 

Disinformation is most knowingly heard as people hearing information that they know is not true, but say it to others or aloud anyway. There are many different ways disinformation appears to us and thats through fake news, theories, frauds, photoshops, and propaganda. What this does is spread fear and suspicion among everyone which messes with the peoples minds. Yes, we know that not everything you read online is true, but numerous people know that and still fall into the mind trick. Cruelty takes a toll on those who do spread disinformation because of the fact you know what you're saying, is not a fact. 

Misinformation also plays into the idea of mind tricking people with having false and inaccurate information be spread, even if the person or place spreading it does not mean to do that. Everyone experiences this because we all make mistakes. At some points in our lives we always think we are right about something and we happen to not be, and thats okay. It becomes a problem when it messes with people's lives, careers, and many other things. Commonly now, misinformation is now spread a lot throughout social media. A great deal of us do this, but with no intent to hurt anyone or cause any harm in general, but unfortunately it happens all the time. 

Ultimately, both disinformation and misinformation has affected society as a whole in numerous ways, in a not so positive light. The lesson people need to learn is how to really do your research before talking about a topic or believing a topic. It has happened too many times in the past years that information has come across wrong or hurt someones life, which is why we all need to be educated on these words and their meanings .