Privacy, Online and Off

    The world that we live in today is heavily operated by technology and is a very prevalent effect on our lives. Technology has brought a lot of good things to society and has been our world faster and has made everything more accessible. On the other hand, technology has led to an abundance of issues regarding privacy. After viewing several Ted Talk videos regarding privacy online, and how our lives are not protected online. How our digital footprint last forever, and how we have lost control over our data and privacy. 

    In the Ted Talk video featuring, Andy Yen, he speaks on information regarding the process of your email being sent to another user, and how you are sending essentially a "postcard", and that "postcard" in the process of it being sent to that person, can read the entire content of your letter. Therefore limiting the privacy of our communication, through the use of technology. As an avid technology user in today's society, this frightens me. I am a college student, on the way to graduation, who is pursuing jobs, sending out a multitude of information regarding my past, my present, and my future, that I want to be disclosed. To know that what personal information I'm sending out, could be traced and helped by a third party, scares me, and makes me rethink the "privacy that I have online. 

    The government should start to take control of this issue, and implement stronger privacy practices and safeguards. In the event the government was able to enforce stronger protective guardrails, this will lead to technology users not having to constantly worry about who is going to receive the information that they are sending out, who it will be tracked, and what type of information that they should be thinking of disclosing within the content of their message. Initially, this change may not instantly lead to a change

in privacy online, but it will be a step in the right to lead users to have ultimate privacy online. With the government laying a foundation with privacy practices, it will lead to future enforcement within privacy policy implementation. 

    From the standpoint of the user, we can also take safer steps to protect our information online. To start, change your passwords regularly, and enable our accounts to be private. With these starting steps, we protect our information, by keeping our information to ourselves, under our own control. Private accounts are a safe option to have, in that you as a user, have total control over who is able to view your profile and take note of your personal information. 

    

    Another step that could be taken, could be using antiwar virus software on your computer.  Software along the lines of, Windows Defender, could offer plenty of security for the user, in that it could limit ad pop-ups that lead to information being recorded by hackers, which could lead to having your personal data stored away forever. Even the strategy of rejecting the cookies when entering a website is a minuscule action that can be done to lead to websites not tracking the information you have had on your time browsing. There is a multitude of steps that could be taken to prevent our information from being leaked and stored away. We must be careful with the information that we put out in the world of technology because you never know who may grab it. The world is only getting faster and more equipt with data collection, so preventative measures need to be taken.