What is Online Privacy?
Recently, it seems that my iPhone knows more about my wants and needs than any family member or friend of mine. Surely right now, my phone could tell you what I wanted for my upcoming birthday more than my mom, dad, or partner. Daily, I can be heard yelling, "How did you know that?" into the depths of my Instagram feed. I am constantly being reminded of the importance of online privacy and I always feel that it is being compromised, often shouting that I want to throw my phone into the nearest river. With that being said, I am guilty of signing many Terms of Service agreements without paying much attention, putting priority on convenience over my own privacy.
Why is this important today?
Online privacy is all about the level of protection that one has while surfing the internet. Who has access to your information? How long do they retain it? What is it being used for? In episode one of The Privacy Paradox: What Your Phone Knows, Bruce Schneier, revered technologist and cryptographer, says," A few clicks and suddenly, we've given away a lot of rights invisibly." He also argues that we would resist carrying a government issued tracking device, but have no issue carrying our phones in our pockets. He likens the metadata being collected to having a private detective hired to spy on us. This metadata that we provide is incredibly valuable, personal surveillance data. This data is shared with the government, marketers, social media sites, and so much more.
The Importance of Privacy in my Learning Space
I currently work as the Student Events Coordinator at Dominican University and was previously a teacher for nine years. Internet privacy is of the utmost importance to young learners and college students alike. I always think back to when I first had a Facebook. I was 18 and had little to no concept of what internet privacy was. Now, I (unfortunately) have access to 15 years of my every thought and picture of what I was doing when I was in college. I have always urged my students to be careful about what they post online. Social media is becoming popular for students at younger and younger ages. Can you imagine having access to social media at 9, 10, or 11? Students who post things online at this age are not using discretion with posting or with reading through the terms of service. This is extremely dangerous and many companies are taking advantage of this ignorance. Another thing that I tell my students is to cover their computer or iPad cameras. In this article, Christopher Soghoian discusses the importance of putting a piece of tape or Band-Aid over your device's camera. It is extremely easy for people to hack into computers and use the cameras to collect video footage. While some may think that this sounds like an episode of Black Mirror, this can happen often, especially to unsuspecting students. The next time that I have a classroom of my own, I will make sure to stress the importance of internet safety on day 1.
Surprises, Knowledge Gained, and Changing Behavior
I was very surprised to learn that it would take 76 hours a year for us to actually read through all of the user agreements that we are exposed to. This probably explains why I am guilty of never actually reading through them. I often fall into the trap that this Time article discusses; I am too lazy to read through everything and I assume that it won't actually hurt me in the long run.
After reading through many of these articles and listening to some podcasts, I am going to vow to make some simple changes that will help me maintain some semblance of internet privacy. First of all, before reading through these sources, I admit that I did not have a piece of tape over my camera. I am going to change that ASAP. I will also download a password manager stat. This also means that I will finally have to change most of my passwords from my old cats' names to something more complicated, but I know that it will be worth it in the long run.
I am thankful for access to these resources because I feel like once I am able to protect myself more online, I will be able to pass this knowledge down to my much more vulnerable students in the future.
Hi Jessica,
ReplyDeleteI also noticed that it would take over 3 days to read through all of those terms of service agreements, but one thing I realized when doing our project was that it may take 30 minutes to read it, but understanding it will take all afternoon! I really like the images you used to accompany your ideas in this post. It reminded me of an easy to navigate infographic!
Great image that accompanies your post! Like you, I both love and hate Facebook memories. While some are great other times I look at an old post and think to myself 'what a dumb thing to post' and I have post-post embarrassment lol! The Terms of Service stuff is crazy. While I understand a company needs to add all of that language I wish they would add an additional easy-to-read version.
ReplyDeleteHi Jess,
ReplyDeleteI can totally relate to your iPhone knowing more about you than actual people in your life. I feel like every time I hop on to Facebook or Instagram, I see ads for things I've either searched for or talked about getting. It's pretty unsettling and I have been paying more attention to the frequency of these targeted ads since reading up on privacy this week.
While I'm not a frequent poster on any platform I have, I can definitely look back and think about times where things were posted by me or my friends that I would have rather kept off the internet. I think it's important that we be good models for our students when it comes to technology- since they are so impressionable, especially the younger students that I teach, it's important they know the consequences of not protecting their information.