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.