The Privacy Dilemma
In our current year of 2020 individuals are active on the internet and the increased traffic is allowing for companies to use our own data to market towards us. If you don't pay for an app you're paying with yourself nothing is free, they turn you into the product and sell your information to other companies to repeat the endless consumer loophole that milks one persons wallet and time to obtaining nothing except instant gratification. Companies will try everything to increases profits and stalk consumer behavior with data mining and tracking and consistently develop ways of avoiding that conversation. Individuals have minimal resources to protect ourselves against surveillance and ways of minimizing our digital footprint but there are some small steps we can take to mitigate the damage these companies can allow us to feel.
Using alternative search engines such as duckduckgo and having a trusted VPN will greatly increase your protection against cyberattacks of any sort. Also frequently check websites for there cookie consumption rate and read carefully for terms of service phrases that are suspicious. Some other measures include not even using the United States dollar and use bitcoin for transactions because its less traceable compared to a bank or credit card. Its difficult to avoid having your data sold in most cases, most social media acts as an open book for others to lurk and find things about you that you didn't know was possible. I personally find it difficult to be 100% secure on the internet, especially with the corporate tricky language and vague statements that promise to store your data safely but end up in another companies hands in exchange for monetary gain.
The term privacy has lost its value once we signed our souls away to the terms of service agreements that we all collectively avoid reading. Its not only that most people dont want to read 30 pages of jumbled words but they make it that way for that reason. Its a complicated problem and yes people can find ways to using alternative sites that dont ask for intrusive monitoring but not everyone is tech savvy and older generations are almost oblivious to what they are singing up for. Is social media worth the trade off of your privacy? Most would say no but I find people oversharing daily on social medias and providing information that can be traced back to them. Not all internet users are literate enough to understand even what the term cookie means. Its a scary concept that we are on a 24/7 watch cycle with no room for privacy. The reasoning behind heavy surveillance is a "just in case" scenario, by 2025 we'll have 360 degree cameras in our bathroom stalls by this rate.
In this Image you can see the query increase for the term cyber security, Its a conversation we all need to have and companies should be more clear with there use of our data. Data protection is becoming a daily routine, its easy to slip and provide too much detail about your personal information.
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