Blog 5 - Privacy

Privacy

I think everyone who uses the internet has a general understanding that privacy by corporations is a big joke. Most will go out and say that they sell your data to third-party companies, but no one knows what that means, and rarely does anyone actually go through and read the terms of service when signing up for something. 

I'm generally not someone who gets overly paranoid about that kind of thing. I already have very bad anxiety, and I know it isn't a real human looking at what I do, so I'm less scared. There are, however, a few examples of weird things happening with advertising and what I'm recommended. My freshman year roommate (she transferred) had lots of money and would buy expensive clothes a lot. I knew I couldn't afford what she could and our styles were drastically opposite (she's feminine and pink, and I prefer more androgynous stuff in darker colors) yet I started getting Gucci and Lululemon ads. I'm dating someone who is into Yu Gi Oh cards and I get ads on those, despite not really showing a huge interest in them. When I took French, I would get so many French ads. I also have a trans friend who has chest dyphoria and I tried to help her find stuff to help and long story short, I get rubber boobs ads now. I don't mind much considering I'm helping people I care about but... really?

It's almost shocking how much personal information we have online. I remember years ago, people got paranoid about FBI agents watching us through our webcams and people started putting up the little camera covers. My generation was largely unaffected by this and made memes because there's no way for everyone to be watched by a real person through their webcams at once. That would imply that half the world are actually FBI agents.

I do think it's important to know that your information isn't entirely private, but at the same time, saying that "everyone can see your emails" isn't true. I can't just go into my professor's email and see everything they send. If it's open, maybe, but it's not readily available for me to just search her up and find her stuff, unless the password somehow gets into a leaked password list by hackers. Bots can scan emails, but its not going to be available for those normal people who aren't looking to hack.