No doubt that new technology is enhancing our freedom and way of life, but at the same time they are also enabling unparallel invasions of our privacy. Everyone is well aware of the fact that a huge proportion of the content both online and offline is produced by individuals like us rather than corporations, but to some extent, at least maintained by them. We use all the latest smartphones to keep in touch with our family and friends but guess what, it also makes it easier for the intelligence agencies to track our location (if they want).Our cellphone carrier also knows who we call and the banks also know our financial history. But, we tend to tame our mind to assume our information is private and secure.
Cyber world, as we know is no different than the world that we are living in. But only that, it poses a bigger and greater threat to our private lives than in reality. This is solely a con effect of technology.We dig around the web about sensitive information which might seem as a secret activity between us or search engines like Google or Bing.
But, today these corporations are posing a threat on our personal information which is retrieved from our online activities (about our likes and dislikes), potentially making it available to third parties and hence yielding a subpoena without our knowledge and consent.
Of late, there has been lot of buzz around “online data privacy” for various reasons, from Facebook’s privacy to policy, government’s outcry for WikiLeaks data to iphones and ipads that are recording and storing data of the users in an unencrypted manner. Interestingly, Apple and Facebook were quick enough to response to the public outcry. Apple in its reply said that it’s not logging on user’s location and rather maintaining a database of Wi-Fi hotspots and cell towers around current location to accurately calculate its location when requested. Facebook too has updated its privacy policies since then, but clearly a lot of people are still “uneasy”. [click to continue…]
