Online Privacy

Does the government really protect our privacy on the web? Do you feel safe giving out personal info? The answers to these questions are personal and based on your own opinions. Realistically speaking we do not have privacy when it comes to the web. This article from the Wall Street Journal goes further on this issue and explains ways to fix this.  

There is an ongoing issue with our privacy on the Internet. The Internet makes it easy for us to save our passwords and personal information like credit cards. In return it makes it easy for others like the FBI, hackers, or whoever to access out information via the Internet. Once you post it, it becomes public access for anyone who wants the information.  The freaky thing is your being watched and so is your personal information without you even knowing it. You’re being watched through things like your ISP on your computer (which identifies you), third party cookies that track your traffic on what sites you visit, and programs like spyware that literally spies on what you do.

Now there are ways around this invasion, unless you don’t mind being viewed under a microscope.  You can set your computer browsers security settings or buy security programs that constantly clean up and keep your computer safe.  This article talks about a company named Abine. Abine has created tools available directly on their website that helps us as consumers fully utilize our “online lives”. They’ve created products like DNT+ and DeleteMe.  DNT+ focuses on improving social networks and DeleteMe focuses on removing personal data.  Companies like Abine are out their looking to create a better online environment for everyone, they are working to help consumers with our privacy on the net.

In the current day and age we are in, this is not necessarily a concern among young people. Young people are used to living their lives where the world knows everything via social networking sites. For them it’s not a concern whether privacy is there or not, but for older generations that are learning their way around the Internet they are concerned for their privacy. Facebook does this to us without us realizing, they track what we view on their site and then what else we view on other sites.

The Internet is a great tool and can be used to our advantage, but when the fact of privacy for personal data is brought up that’s nothing to fool around with. We need to keep a close eye on this and find ways to fix this problem. We need high tech and cutting edge companies to come out with software that makes the government and sites like Facebook sit on the edge of their seat a little bit. We can’t make accessing our personal information that easy. I know we live in a digital online age where everything is easily accessible, but do you really want your entire identify and profile being found with the click of a button?