What exactly is the term “privacy“?

“Privacy – Privacy Online” by perspec_photo88 is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

According to Dictionary.com privacy means: “freedom from damaging publicity, public scrutiny, secret surveillance, or unauthorized disclosure of one’s personal data or information, as by a government, corporation, or individual”. In other words, one’s privacy is the right every one of us has of maintaining certain information and/or business to ourselves. No one is obligated to divulge any personal data about themselves if they don’t want to.

I personally think privacy is fundamental to every person and, sadly, this term has somehow become something of the past. With the rise of the internet and social medias it has become more and more impossible to keep our lives as private as we would want to. It honestly scares me how much of our information might be going around that we’re not aware of. Even though there are certain tricks and tips to keep ourselves more anonymous while navigating through the internet, nothing is really 100% private or secure. Even the most popular and apparently safe websites could have their own weak and unsafe spots.

taken from Parks and Recreation

NBCNews.com released an article where it talks about how, and I quote: “there are a lot more people tracking you than you think”. A lot of companies, even though they have a ‘privacy policy’ they still sell their consumer’s personal information to third parties and get, of course, an amount of money for them. This article also talked about how we don’t usually believe the information we post on the internet can actually help other people to reach us or use our identity in the future, but it is all true. For example; someone actually used Richard Smith’s, a chief technical officer at the non-profit Privacy Foundation, FAX number to run up their credit card bills.

“confusing internet meme” by rjk9601 is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

In the end, we can’t actually control our lives if we don’t take the right measures to be able to do so. No one respects privacy anymore, so we should be careful what, how, where, and to whom we share our thoughts and information.

Don’t ever forget to also protect your passwords and be smart when it comes to them. Passwords are basically the key to all your personal data and identity. Here’s a tweet + video of how hackers can easily steal our passwords.

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