Does “Privacy Online” Really Exist?

You can’t really talk about privacy online without talking about our “digital footprints.”  Really, whatever you do online can be traced in some way.  There are so many firms or apps that are created just to find out information about you, and they use your digital footprints that you create every time you go online.  For example, the commercial side of the internet has capitalized on the opportunity to track our movements on the internet.  Since the basic structure of the internet is funded by marketing, in some form, marketers exploit our digital footprints to target their products.  This is why we may receive so many unwanted advertisements because our digital footprint is being tracked by sites such as Google, Facebook, and Twitter.

Here is a video I found by the Internet Society about our digital footprints and how much of our data is shared by third parties.

So basically, the more we use the internet and the more we use our smartphones, the less privacy we have.  Therefore, it’s important to try to be more active in checking my settings on my computer, in my accounts, and on my phone.  Should I be paying more attention to the ‘cookies’ I collect every day?  Also, I try to remember to use DuckDuckGo, it’s a search engine that doesn’t track you.  You can even use Google to search by typing !g before your search.  

Why Privacy Matters

I remember watching this Ted Talk by Glenn Greenwald called, Why Privacy Matters.  Greenwald is the American journalist well-known for publishing the leaks from Edward Snowden about the US and British global surveillance programs.  His ideas best sum up my thoughts about privacy.  I think that privacy should be thought of as a human right, whether or not it is offline or online.  I really don’t like the fact that companies, governments, or citizens might be collecting and sharing my personal information.

I feel proud that there are people like Snowden and Greenwald to speak up and fight for our rights because I do believe that the more people we have coming together on issues like this, the more we can promote change.  Just the other day there was an article that came up in my news feed and it’s titled:  European Court Ruling Could Recognize Mass Surveillance Violates Human Rights.  The article discusses a current hearing in Britain it states that,

The case challenges practices, revealed by Edward Snowden, that breach the rights to privacy and freedom of expression, which are guaranteed not only under U.S. domestic law, but also under international human rights law.

I can imagine that we have a long way to go with this, but I do believe that we should bond together on this. In the meantime, we just need to take make sure we take all precautions and safeguard our own privacy.

This is an article titled, The Government Won’t Protect Your Privacy, So Here’s How to do it Yourself. This article states a few precautions that we can all take to help protect our online privacy:

1. Use a Virtual Private Network (VPN)
2. Keep Track of Cookies Tracking You
3. Use Tor for Networking Traffic
4. Change Your Domain Name Service

After writing this article, I think I’ll set up a one-to-one workshop with one of my colleagues from the technology office to talk about some of these ideas.  Perhaps I can also try to persuade them to do some sort of teacher workshop about online privacy, as well.  Then perhaps we can all take extra precautions and also teach our students.

Terms of Service

I must admit that when I sign up for a new online account, I usually just briefly skim over the Terms of Services because they are usually soooooooo long!  I know that’s not very helpful, but who has time to read those Terms of Service documents, anyway?

That’s why I liked this article:  A lawyer rewrote Instagram’s privacy policy so kids and parents can have a meaningful talk about privacy.  Apparently, a lawyer named Jenny Afia, from the UK, rewrote Instagram’s Terms of Services so that kids could understand it.  The article sites a couple of passages from the rewritten agreement to show how easy it is to understand:

– Officially you own any original pictures and videos you post, but we are allowed to use them, and we can let others use them as well, anywhere around the world. Other people might pay us to use them and we will not pay you for that.

– […] we may keep, use and share your personal information with companies connected with Instagram. This information includes your name, email address, school, where you live, pictures, phone number, your likes and dislikes, where you go, who your friends are, how often you use Instagram, and any other personal information we findsuch as your birthday or who you are chatting with, including in private messages (DMs).

I think that if Terms of Services were easier to read, then people would either use the social media platform less or use it with more caution. I actually like this article because it seems very useful to talk about with my students and it also includes other resources that could be helpful in digital citizenship lessons or when speaking with parents.  This is also from the article:

In addition, the report includes advice and links to other resources for parents. For instance, it says:

• the UK Safer Internet Centre has a “guide to technology” for parents.
• A project called Net Aware offers a parents’ guide to popular apps kids are using, and rates them on their privacy policy, among other things.
• A guide from the American Pediatric Family Media Plan provides a tool for planning children’s days so they get the right balance of online time and other activities.

I need to take a more active role in maintaining as much privacy as I can online.  Here is a wikihow article about How to Maintain Your Privacy Online.

Explaining VPN’s

I’ll end this post with a video explaining VPN’s.