Post #7: Online Privacy

 Our Privacy

As social media have continued to grow over the past two decades, we have seen a spike in the online presence that each individual has. While this has created an ideal environment for people to communicated with one another, it has also created the perfect environment for our personal privacies to become violated on a regular bases which could affect us in hundreds if not thousands of different way.

This stripping of privacy is something we now must deal with as part of our daily life and many have mixed feelings about. At first this stripping of privacy doesn't seem very bad as it allows corporations to understand our interests based off our posts, pictures, and locations which can make there advertisement towards us be more personal. This one its own isn't to bad but people are also concerned about what else these companies or governments are doing with this information about you. They could sell it, use it to track our daily lives, or even use it to control our opinions and thoughts which is a major issue when it comes to our first amendment liberties.

This violation of our privacy to attempt to control our actions should be something that government attempts to protect us from because of its potential to violate our liberty. What I feel should be done by the government to help further our personal privacies is one of two things. The first, more extreme, option is to punish companies for selling our information in third party deals in order to stop the spread of information. The second option is to enforce a similar policy to that of cookies where its informs the users that their information is able to given to other companies in a understandable and easy to read format which would hopefully let the users be mindful of it at the very minimum.

The best way to avoid this however is to be careful regarding your personal footprint online. Attempt to avoid giving your real information on websites and being careful on what you post online are the two best ways to take personal responsibility of your privacy in order to defend your life.