Blog #2 Privacy, Online & Off

 

    With us being more reliant on the internet it is important to keep yourself safe online, our data is valuable to advertisers. Instead of casting a wide net, they use targeted ads for items that we may want to have. Having my personal information that is private online can completely ruin a person's reputation and security. If bad actors know where I live or know my banking information, they would be able to buy items using my money. Moreover, be able to call the house for multiple pizza's and call the police for a fake police report, which can affect my family's safety.

    Private messages that were only to be seen by the sender and receiver that if one person's is messages are leaked online that effects the other person that they are in contact with along with other friends. Keeping my email's password and phone number safe is the main method that if I forget my password on another site, that site would email me or text me a link to recover my password/remake it Emails's TED Talk. Most websites ask for your email address in order to make an account. Email fishing is a way that scammers can trick a victim into clicking a link from an email address that looks similar to a real retail's address.

    In my opinion, I don't know what the government can even do because they are complacent in the same way Facebook gathers user data. In class, I remembered that the government just asks these companies to hand over data of as user that they want info on a user. Sure, It's used to catch people doing illegal acts, but it does not mean that it can be used against innocent citizens still can be abused.

    There are ways to protect ourselves from invasion of privacy, one would be to use a VPN (Virtual private network) a way to “spoof” your connection to any location around the world. Websites are unable to track that user's location, but the good ones cost money and the free ones are sketchy because they would have to make money somehow. So they collect your data, the opposite of what you want from a VPN. 2 Add-ons/Extensions to use would be using an ad blocker “uBlock Origin” and a password manager “Bitwarden”. Those are the add-ons I use in my browsers when I'm on the internet, 2FA is also a great option.