Private Information

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Is your private information open to the public online? Since the fast development of the internet and the world wide web, people can now connect faster with each other online. Everything related to the internet is getting faster, better and more reliable, thus, more people use it daily. With the increase in smartphones, tablets and computers in the last decade, the use of social media platforms has skyrocketed. This means that more information is being shared online between people instead of through phone or in person. It also means that this information can easily be monitored, tracked and even stored. This information is now starting to become very valuable for advertisers so it is being sold to third parties (Andrews, 1). In the future, …show more content…

These companies have found ways to generate revenue just off the free information they get when people enter on their platforms. It is not certain that this was their plan all along but this is where we are at. We accept a form that nobody ever reads through stating that the platform owns the information we enter into the website. The companies benefit greatly from it and everything is growing fast. What about when harmful third parties want to buy personal information from these companies? Or government wanting to do background checks or to find people that search for things that can lead to terrorist attacks online? This is a very disputed question about how we should protect this information or let it loose. Laws about this matters are very loose and that can be a bad thing …show more content…

Although Google provides excellent services that come at no cost or little cost to the consumer, they make their money's worth collecting your information. This privacy problem was called "perhaps the most difficult privacy problem in all of human history" by Princeton computer scientist Edward Felten. Another database monitored by the FBI and the NSA is the "Database of Intentions." This is a database based on everything people do online and what their intentions might be in the future, good or bad. So technically, searching for things related to terrorism, child pornography or other illegal things might put you on that database for what you searched for. While this is a clever way to filter through people to get closer to possible terrorists or people with harmful intentions, it also opens up everyone's private information to a group of people working for NSA or FBI (Tene, 2-12). Computer applications are getting better in filtering through all the information given and only giving output with information connected to terrorists, pedophiles, hackers and crime lords in a closed facility where only agents of NSA and FBI can view this information. So while all data is being analyzed, almost all of it will never be seen by agents or other people unless they have a specific interest in that person (Tene,

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