Internet Privacy Essay
Recently there has been a lot of discussion about privacy on the internet and if kids should be able to use it. A great number of people think that you deserve more privacy on things like social media. Others think that we have enough privacy you just have to be smart about what you do on the internet. When you search or click on something it gets tracked by a cookie, cookies determine what ads you get on websites. When using social media it is very easy for someone to look at your account and see anything and everything you have ever shared about yourself. Some people think that it is very easy to keep your social media private, all you need to do is be smart about it.
Cookies are the things that remember what you search and click on while using the internet. Let's say you were looking on a website for new clothes, now thirty minutes later you are on a website playing games. You
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Well it is possible, a survey from the NCSA said that 60% of “young people” have created a social media account without their parents knowing. If they are so preoccupied with hiding social media from their parents then they are probably doing a pretty good job of hiding it from all the random people as well. Many social media platforms have ways that you make your account more privacy, for instance Facebook has a settings that make your posts only viewable by people you have added as friends, Instagram has similar settings where if someone tries to come to follow your page you have to approve them. Irina Raicu said “ in a recent survey 92% of people said they changed some privacy settings in their account/s, 42% limited the number of people on their friends lists, and 31% had installed blockers that stopped people from tracking them on the internet”. It's clear that there is ways to protect yourself, the only hard part is finding
..., websites and online marketers do find ways around users’ precautions to gain personal information. There are many people out there who want to use personal information like credit card numbers or addresses to cause harm to others. These cases are the extremely negative ones that people want to and should avoid. The case of companies and third parties tracking browsing history and other information for advertising purposes hover over a finer line between good and bad. For some people, tracking can be considered convenient in terms of shopping for what they are interested in, and others may be uncomfortable with the thought of being tracked without knowing. As stated in the beginning, complete privacy is unlikely, but being informed about the tactics of the Internet can help one protect themselves and others in their care to be as careful and private as possible.
Lily Huang author of Protect the Willfully Ignorant states “An increasingly urgent question of privacy or how best to keep your public plot walled in” (474). Most internet users savvy or not, are aware of the potential risks. Most people know the potential risk for permanency and of the pictures or information we put out on social networks or other sites and the content being seen. We have all heard the warnings since grammar school from everyone about the internet and how to use it. Teachers, parents, librarians and school inundate our children all throughout school about information on safe usage. To be aware of predators and such is common knowledge. Why the need for laws to protect childrens’ privacy, and usage against exploitation? Similar reasons to why we wear seatbelts while driving and it is enforced by law. We all want our freedoms not to be infringed but at what cost and to who? We are aware of the statistics and outcomes of auto accidents without seatbelts and the need “to protect the willfully ignorant” (Huang). Lily Huang discussed consumer’s lack of expertise for making the best privacy decisions and how important default privacy settings are on social networks (475).
Social media companies have complete control a their users information and can do what they want with it. Now if those companies went spreading the information, no one would use their sites but they can make changes to privacy setting that make it easier for anyone to view information of other users. For example, Facebook has privacy settings so your information is not out for public viewing, but a while back they changed the default privacy setting to make all your information viewable to the public unless you changed it. There was an uproar and everyone felt they were trying to be sneaky about it because they did not give any notice when they did it, but Facebook claimed they were not trying to do anything fallacious. Social media companies have to be careful when doing anything with privacy settings because people get extremely defensive regarding their information. There is also a level of comfort that comes with age. The older generations have no trust when it comes to putting their information online. Most feel as if they are being tricked in some way. But the generation kids are growing up in now, all their trust is put in the internet. Kids and young adults will put all their information online because that is how the world functions. In today’s world, if you are not putting all your information online and using your phone and laptop to get everything done, you are inefficient. And this
Has your privacy ever been so invaded, you feel like your life is at risk? Do you even know if your life is at risk? People are being watched everyday and do not even know it. In the article, “How Private Is Your Private Life?,” by Andrea Rock, the author believes that people’s privacy is at risk. Similarly, in the article “Steering Social Media,” written by David Raths, the author discusses the issue with teenagers putting their private information on social media websites. Raths’s article also discusses how schools put information online to help students. Teenagers put too much information on social media, schools help protect students’ privacy online, and people’s privacy is at risk.
Despite all the controversy and disagreements, most of the populous would agree that on an individual level, privacy is our space to be ourselves as well as to define ourselves through autonomy and protecting our dignity. Our interactions with others can define the level of our relationships with them through the amount of privacy we can afford in the relationship. As we age and immerse ourselves into society, we gain a sense of confidence and security from our privacy. A sense that others know only what we tell them and we know only what they tell us in exchange. What we fear is what others can access and what they might do if they knew of our vulnerabilities. Maintaining and keeping our vulnerable aspects private, we develop a false sense of personal safety from the outside.
Although the right to privacy has been used to sway the outcome of many U.S court cases, including the famous Supreme Court ruling of Roe vs. Wade, there is still some debate over how the “right to privacy” should be viewed. For example both Judith Jarvis Thompson, and James Rachels agree that the right to privacy is indeed a right that is bestowed upon citizens, however their perception of how one is granted this right is quite different.
Cyber security is like trying to box while being blindfolded.. Cyber instability may cause massive panic in citizens of the United States. Government surveillance is one of the platforms of cyber security and it started to erupt after the 9/11 incident. The main ways the government watches people today is with cell phone, social media, and email surveillance. Should they be able to invade our privacy? Maybe. Many crimes are committed on computers everyday whether it be credit card hacks, stolen identities, or even social media accounts taken. Cyber attacks may lead people to distrust the cyber community and the people behind cyber protection.
Web site administrators say that the primary purpose of cookies is not to track Internet surfing habits. Rather they argue that cookies allow users to customize their experiences on the web. Services like My Yahoo would not work nearly as smoothly without cookies.
Cookies are used to gather statistics on how customers use the site. For example, to:
In the United States high schools dealing with student’s privacy are becoming more of a huge problem and more students are feeling that schools are validating their privacy rights. In recent discussions of teen privacy in school, is whether if schools go overboard sometimes and feel they can search the student’s because they are using school property or are on school property. Some people feel that students do need more privacy from their schools because they need their privacy just like everyone else, and with this more reasonability they will have to get them ready when they leave school. On the other hand, some think that by giving more privacy to the student’s more poor decisions would come out of it than strong ones. Students that have
Large online retailers can use cookies on their sites and get a lot of information about their customers like browsing history and location. Cookies are a type of message that the Web server give to a web browser that then stores the information for later use. For example, companies informed their previous customers about current discounts and offers through emails. The main purpose of cookies is to gather user 's information like user locations and present different version of the web pages according to the information received.
For those not familiar with the internet type of cookie, http://www.cookiecentral.com/ provides the definition of a cookie and some of the ways they are used. The site states, "a 'cookie' is a small piece of information sent by a web server to store on a web browser so it can later be read back from that browser." When you visit a cookie-using site on the web, that site will save a small text file in your browser's folder or directory. This file will tell them who you are if you ever visit their site again. The site goes on to explain in more detail the different areas where a cookie can be used. The various tasks that can be performed by a cookie listed include online ordering, targeted marketing, user ID's, and site personalization. It is true that there are some beneficial uses of cookies. For example, personalizing a certain ...
Every year, cybercrime costs businesses $400 billion and by 2019, cybercrime will have cost the global economy 2.1 trillion dollars (Morgan 1). But, economic loss isn’t the only problem caused by weak cybersecurity; weak cybersecurity measures could allow hackers to collect data on citizens, cause widespread death, and destroy entire nations. Despite the massive threat the problem poses, no one has yet to institute an effective solution. Although government regulation and website blocking attempt to eliminate cybercrime and cyberwarfare, an ideal solution exists in government guidance and collaboration with the private sector.
Keeping your privacy is getting harder and harder to do, but even though the privacy setting can help to an extent, they don’t always work the way they should. Putting information out for the public eye to see can be a risk but could also be used to the Facebook users advantage. With this comes a loss of privacy that the user has to deal with. No matter how many privacy settings are used or are changed they never a guaranty of full privacy. The only real way to guaranty this is to stay away from social media completely. With that we would lose the connected world we have today.
There has been controversy as to whether parents should limit the use of social media by teenagers. Teenagers feel that there is no need to limit the use of their social media networking, but on the other hand parents should feel the need to limit their use and also keep track of their teen’s social networking. Social media has allowed to be connected with their peers, teens who post positive status are more likely to be involved in extracurricular activities, and to many teens putting up “selfies” is a self confidence boost; however, too much social media can affect students GPA in school, cyber bulling can affect social health. Social media networks can give out personal information.