Assignment – Digital Exhaust and Privacy
‘Instructor’s Name’
Technology has shrunk our world and has offered us comforts and life style which was unimaginable even as early as a few decades ago. Technology was first perceived to be a tool to boost the capability of humans, to solve a problem or construct a new thing (like a hammer), and later it branched out to encompass the knowhow of creating things or enhancing an existing product (like creating a nuclear bomb). Technology’s evolution as a culture happened after the Second World War II, and is heavily connected with the invention of computer and internet. Today technology and culture are so intermingled that every aspect of human life be it housing, navigating, leisure, entertainment, or socializing, it is all done primarily through technology. A related regrettable paradox though is that, we all spawn digital exhaust unknowingly as we steer through our lives.
Our process of generating digital data starts, as soon as we wake up from our bed in the morning. For Smartphone users like me the process starts within the first 15 minutes of the day. Researches show that most people check their email within a few minutes after they wake up. So it starts from there, and continues as we use Google maps while driving through to work or school, comment on the Face book posts, and then it goes on as we switch on our laptops/ Smartphone and do whatever it is we do (work, learn, socialize or leisure). Today it is moving beyond the point where the processor of the instrument in your pocket alone is giving away data. The whole environment surrounding us, like our homes, stores, cars, transportation systems etc, are acting like sensors imbibing and transmitting data. They can ‘reflect ‘and ‘sense’, and with right type of gadgets anybody can put a track on us and can come out with an accurate account of our activities.
Edward J. Snowden has become a world popular personality today, and through this whistle blower the entire world now knows that the American Government has kept an eagle’s eye over many world leaders. As James Risen and Eric Lichtblau put it, today NSA is the unquestioned landlord of the digital assets of the entire world. (Cohen, 2013) If the privacy of such influential political personalities does not stand a chance against the almighty NSA and other such surveillance organizations, what is the probability of our personal data remaining what is should be– personal. Surveys indicate that 62% of people opine that they view the government access of their personal data as an intrusion of privacy. It is not just the government organizations, but also the corporate world, which also wants to have their share of the, output of the data-hauling digital equipments of the world.
The amount of data we generate today has increased many a fold. We do not generate data just through our emails and social media interactions, but we inadvertently produce a lot of valuable data just through our activities like shopping, using phones and sometimes just by living. For instance, our medical reports are a gold mine for health insurance companies and so is our shopping habit to retailers. There was an incident, where a home energy tracking system enabled a mother, to find out that her son was playing games in his X box and not doing his school work. If we substitute a corporate in place of the mother, then the dynamics of this incident alters drastically.
So this digital exhaust should concern all of us from our privacy perspectives. There have been worrying reports that, Google is going to include the photos of Google+ users in adverts. Face book too had it share of controversy by announcing an advertising campaign known as sponsored stories, which resulted in a lawsuit, which ended up with FB paying a compensation of $20 million. (Brustein, 2013) With things getting murkier in the privacy aspect of the digital world, it is imperative that we take some measures if we want to safeguard our personal space. The founding fathers have given every citizen of this country, the right to be protected against unlawful search of their property through the fourth amendment, centuries before the internet was discovered. Well! Our digital information is our property and the government owes us protection. But putting the legislations, required for safeguarding digital privacy, aside, there are some simple steps which we might take ourselves, to ensure that our digital fortress is not impeded.
It starts with fine tuning our privacy settings of our accounts in the social media platform and paying heed to messages such as ‘you can unclick the box if you do not want your like to be shared’ . When you install a new app sometimes the service provider assigns certain services to your computer by default, like a toolbar or a subscription to newsletters etc. Most of the times we do not look in carefully at what options are ticked when installing an app. And taking some time to note of such minute things may help us block unwanted access to our data. Deleting the cookies and temporary files in the hardware, erasing the browsing history, better yet using a private window for browsing and similar such steps might come in handy to an extent. Most importantly we should all take the time to, take stock of the many profiles we have created online, and the comments and videos posted by us on public locales.
Digital exhaust is defined as the enormous and unrestrained data which is produced as the byproduct of our online activities. This data is in high demand among many entities for various purposes. So while we wait for the State to initiate the process of defining digital privacy, we ourselves should take some steps such as those mentioned above, to secure our privacy. In short, let us not forfeit the responsibility of managing and using our personal data to others, but retain it with ourselves, as no one else has the equity state we have in our good image.
Reference List
- Joshua Brustein. (October 11, 2013). Google Is Going to Include Your Face in Its New Ads. Retrieved from http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-10-11/google-plans-to-include-users-faces-in-ads
- Roger Cohen. (June 27, 2013). The New York Times. The Service of Snowden. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/28/opinion/global/the-service-of-snowden.html?_r=0
