Privacy & Security

Have you ever thought about what you and your friends agree to when creating an account on any social media platform? Lets take Facebook as an example: once you sign up, without knowing the true depth of the agreement you consented, the social media giant has been allowed by vous to collect your data, with the pretense of making your experience more “enjoyable” with personalized ads and recommendations. While this doesn’t sound too alarming at first, just think about that for a minute. These social media platforms that we seemingly blindly trust so much, such as Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter and Google, have the permission to rifle through our contacts list for future reference. This is how, once you open an app, you’re given a list of people you may know, often accompanied by pictures of faces that you’re familiar with. Now let that sink in for a moment.

These companies have incredibly valuable information. They’ve created your profile that includes your name, date of birth, location history, your interests, etc. They even keep the information you deleted and thought would be gone forever! What’s horrifying is when you become aware that yes, these data files- filled with highly sensitive information about our private lives- is sold to other companies that have the liberty to target you as probable customers. Do you like technology and are looking for a new phone because the last one is malfunctioning? Oh, look at this! A brand new iPhone is in stock, available in a store near you! Are you having a baby? Here’s a 50% discount on your first order in Amazon!

Here’s links for articles about these topics on The Guardian and The New York Times.

Knowing this, I’d suggest you check the data Google has on you and change the permission settings for them, but you do you, sweetheart.

Do you want to know who is alerted when you click on a website? Because I sure did, using Disconnect.me as an extension in my browser. Here’s a YouTube tutorial on how to do just that. After adding the extension, I clicked on two websites I visit often. Here’s what I found:

Remember: everything we do on the internet is never private. But now we’re aware that this danger has been seeping into our daily, non-technology aspect of our lives without us really knowing.