Nichole Kaledas
Fourth Part of Final Project
Amy Metcalf
Privacy is a luxury than many Americans take for granted every day, although when pressed, they say that it is an unalienable right that should never be taken away. What happens though when we take it away from ourselves? Who is the one to blame then when we voluntarily give up pages upon pages of information about ourselves to anyone who has a laptop and a credit card?. By giving away our privacy and inviting the entire world into our lives, we are essentially living a transparent life which will undoubtedly lead to less safety for all. Social networking sites and programs like Google Earth take away our privacy and cause harm because of the massive amount of information about our daily lives that is given out with and without permission. The problem with the lack of privacy and the type of information that we constantly put out onto the internet is the fact that is will cause us both physical harm as well as financial harm. It is absolutely imperative that we end this epidemic that has swept not only the nation, but the world as well. Through simple changes in our privacy settings and the way we think about the internet and how we use it will lead to a safer way of life both on the computer and while you are off as well.
Just to simply overview the severity of what would happen in a world with the little amount of privacy that we currently have, there are two major concerns. First of all, physical security is absolutely paramount not only for yourself, but for your loved ones as well. With social networks such as Facebook and the slowly dying Myspace, you can upload photos, say where you work, where you attend school, when your birthday is and so on. Many people put far more information than just that including their everyday plans and some people often check in at certain places. This is an app that allows you to essentially track yourself and post this information onto your Facebook. More than just the information that we write, there is also the visual evidence that is found through pictures and also through associations with people. For example, if someone was stalking you, they could look on your wall and see who posts their more often or they could simply look through your friends until they find an easy target that they could use to get to you. Either way, by putting out so much information in the open, you are opening yourself up to all sorts of people; not just your friends.
The reason transparency is such a problem is because, to put it simply, there are bad people in this world. We cannot give our personal information to them and not expect a negative consequence in return. Would you give yourself a convicted murderer your address and school schedule? If you have a Facebook, you probably already have. There have been multiple robberies, stalking, and murders that have been a direct result of information being so available on the internet. Mostly young children have fallen victim to these stalking crimes, but adult victims have also been discovered. Facebook is not the only website that has caused a lot of uproar in the news in the way of privacy. Twitter is essentially a website that allows you to follow anybody, anywhere, anytime. In Harlem, a young man was murdered because his killer, a personal enemy, followed his Tweets and found where the victim was so he could murder him. These cases are not all that difficult to find, it is not as though these are once in a while incidents, but instead these are becoming more of the norm. It has become such a cyber world that not even criminals act or plan these acts like they used to. In fact, in Britain a group of men actually used Google Earth to track the daily schedules of multiple families in order to rob their houses while they were away. Clearly by giving out too much information, you are truly just asking for trouble because you never know who has become interested in you.
As previously stated, another major issue that comes from giving away our privacy and becoming transparent to the world is the financial problems that come along as well. A very common, and very serious, crime that has began to spread like wildfire is identity theft. In today’s society every one in ten people are personally affected by identity theft. This translates to every one in ten people have their identities stolen and their credit scores permanently ruined because somebody somewhere was able to use their information that they either gave out willingly. Most information that is used to commit fraud is obtained through either a scam online or by online hacking where a hacker than hacks into the website that a person has just used to purchase an item and uses their skills to obtain the credit card and card holders’ information. Financial privacy is absolutely vital if anybody wants to ever amass any amount of wealth or make any large investments; it is quite easy to say that information that we put on the internet in our teens and twenties is never expected to come back and stop us from being able to purchase a house, but it just might.
Ok, so all of us have a great deal of information out on the internet whether it is through us allowing it or it being out there for a price. But the question that is begging to be answered it, what can we do about it? Is it too late for us to protect ourselves and our loved ones? The truth is once our information is out on the internet, it cannot truly be deleted. Nothing on the internet really ever goes away, it is stored somewhere somehow, and however, if we stop giving out unnecessary information, like our hometowns and workplaces, we can protect ourselves. The very first thing that all people with a Facebook account or other social networking site is to change our profiles to private; and not that private setting where friends of friends can see it, but truly private where only friends can see it. After that, everybody needs to take off information such as their school and place of work. By taking these two places off alone, your schedule could be much more difficult to track down if you were truly being stalked by a predator. Outside of what we can do for ourselves with our own personal websites, we must petition the government if we truly want change.
The government needs to make a stand and not allow web spaces like Google Earth to have real time footage or have footage of a street view because it takes away privacy and gives a picture to an particular address or city. If the predator has our address, they can not only see where we live, but also look for ways to invade our homes when we are away. The government should also implement certain security devices on websites that are commonly gone to to purchase retail items online such as Kohls.com, Target.com, or any other site that is relatable. If it is much more difficult for hackers to obtain information off of these sites, the number of identity theft victims is sure to decrease. The government needs to protect its people when it comes to information that can be viewed and obtained from the internet because let’s face it, Uncle Sam is always watching.
Transparency is an undeniable epidemic. We are taking away our own privacy and essentially living in glass houses inviting all sorts of different characters into our lives without ever meeting them. When it comes down to it, there are simply bad people in this world and if we are giving them a key to our house of course they will use it. It is our task and duty to ensure that we are not making ourselves targets or easy prey, but instead make ourselves wise to these scams and protect ourselves by censoring the information that we readily give out. This epidemic is just like the Plague, it is deadly and it will hit at almost every person at some point with some degree of irreconcilability, we just don’t know when.
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