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Data for sale: Do we value our privacy enough to protect it?

The Covid-19 pandemic has led to an inevitable surge in the use of digital technologies due to the social distancing norms and nationwide lockdowns. As millions of people go online for entertainment and more, total internet consumption has risen by 40%, according to preliminary statistics. With the expansion of internet and the virtual world, privacy has become an illusion. With great freedom comes great responsibility. This seizes to exist in the internet world. Privacy is a rising murky issue. Companies continue to permeate and gather data about consumers. Data proliferation has increased and moved across boundaries. The internet has turned into a vast surveillance platform tracking everything in its path. Most of the people using the internet are unaware about the misuse of data and privacy breaches.  

Did you hear about how a target figured out how a teen girl was pregnant before her father did? Sounds absurd right! Her purchasing habits indicated to the target’s algorithm that she was pregnant and it was right (1). This is called targeted marketing. Simply by studying their liking patterns on Facebook researchers can determine the race, sexuality and the religion of a person. One of the patterns that helped identify a heterosexual man was being confused after waking up from naps.
The internet is used across various industries such as government, health care, retail, education and finance. These industries rely on the availability to access personal information. A small flaw can make this information available to a hacker who might use it for personal gain. Once you post information online, there is no turning back. Asking for help is like screaming into an empty void. Futility of privacy is increasing with the expansion of the internet of things. Getting information like health records, browsing habits, purchases, financial data, or employment information about anybody is a piece of cake! People are opting to give up on privacy by providing personal information on social platforms. It is more like a compulsion than a choice. Consider downloading any application or joining any social networking platform. You cannot use these platforms without providing a minimal amount of personal information. The foundation of most of the applications and social networking platforms is connecting people and information gathering. A perennial dilemma exists. We want to live in an open world, but parallelly ask for privacy protection.

Facebook, which has over 2 billion users does not charge you a single penny. It is a key for users to realize that the highly addictive user experience of social platforms is designed to build stickiness or the amount of time you spend on the platform which directly translates into better data metrics for the platform which are then used to make money. Both Facebook and Instagram do not charge anything from the user directly. Both the apps however track exactly what you do on the app. This includes creating and maintaining the profile of your likes, dislikes, interests, hobbies and much more. Yes, it can even include your entire address book. This data is then offered to marketers who can run ads that are tuned specially to cater to specific interests or audiences. Facebook claims that does not sell any data it has on you and that is likely to be true. Its true business model isn’t a social media platform, in fact it is the data it has on you and that data is worth a fortune! Instagram too follows the same model. It knows exactly the kind of product you are interested in. Ever started getting ads for fashion brands when you followed a designer on Instagram? Well, I have, and that is Instagram's marketing and data collection at play. The company was bought by Facebook in 2012 for $1 billion. Currently its net worth is over $100 billion, more than Facebook itself! And what about WhatsApp. Its renewed privacy policies are the talk of the town. Contrary to what many believe, WhatsApp cannot read your messages as it is end to end encrypted. But here is everything else it knows. It knows what phone you are using, the network you are using, your O.S, battery status, signal strength, time zone, IP address, status updates, group details and profile picture. And now as per the policy update all these data can be shared to ‘Facebook Companies’ by them. We are at their mercy to accept the terms or leave the platform. This is how these social giants are imposing upon us what could be called ‘Digital Dadagiri’. 

So now the important question is how do we protect ourselves from identity theft. The proactive response of the governments across the world following the Cambridge Analytica scandal showed that data privacy laws can be of much help to regulate the functioning of these companies. However, on a personal level you can also practice a few things to keep yourselves somewhat protected. Here are some ways to do so: 

  • Limit the personal information you share on social media - Providing too much information on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram could make it easier for cyber-criminals to obtain identifying information, which could allow them to steal your identity or to access your financial information. For example, could an identity thief determine your high school mascot or your mother’s maiden name from digging through your Facebook account? This information is sometimes used as security questions to change passwords on financial accounts. 
  • Use a virtual private network- VPNs mask your Internet Protocol (IP) address so your online actions are virtually untraceable. Using a VPN is especially important when you’re on public Wi-Fi at a library, coffee shop, or other public location. A VPN will make it more difficult for cyber-criminals to breach your online privacy and access your personal information. 
  • Evade tracking- When you visit a website, your browser discloses a bunch of stuff about you and your surfing history. Marketers use that information to profile you and target you with ads. Incognito mode can’t really protect that tracking; you need to use special tools. 
  • Review permissions for mobile apps and browser extensions-Mobile apps prompt you to give them permissions to access contacts or files in device storage, and to use the camera, microphone, geolocation, and so on. Some really cannot work without these permissions, but some use this information to profile you for marketing (and worse). Fortunately, it’s relatively easy to control which apps are given which permissions. The same stands for browser extensions, which also have unfortunate spying tendencies. 
  • Stay private on Wi-Fi networks-Public Wi-Fi networks usually do not encrypt traffic, and that means anyone on the same network can try to snoop on your traffic. Avoid transmitting any sensitive data — logins, passwords, credit card data, and so forth — over public Wi-Fi, and use a VPN to encrypt your data and protect it from prying eyes. 

Image(s) Source: Google

Jayant Singh
(Winner- Dayatva's Blog Carnival)


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