Are We Invisible In The Cyber World?
Everyone in the Internet age thought they are invisible behind the keyboard, but what if the truth is quite the opposite? The exposure of personal data makes important information such as identity, credit cards, bank account passwords, etc., easily fall into the blink of an eye.
Modern people use mobile phones from the first sight of getting up to the last sight before going to bed. They are closer to the time than their intimate lovers. As many activities are carried out on the Internet or mobile phones, including whereabouts, keyword queries, pages visited, and even just the “Like” on Facebook, etc., more and more advanced technology can record our behaviors. We might lose our personal privacy and have no idea about it.
How Does Sharing Our Data Benefit Us?
Although sharing our personal data can harm us by tracking our digital footprint or stealing confidential details, it can benefit us in certain ways. On one hand, in the past, companies had difficulty targeting their customers and thus what they’d earned didn’t deserve what they’d paid to marketing field. By taking advantage of our data, companies can target their costumers with more accurate analysis based on their interests.
One the other hand, we, as consumers, cannot deny that some advertisements successfully draw our attention to take action. The advertisements in this digital era are no longer dull and annoying, on the contrary, they attract us and closely are related to our daily lives.
Is It Fair That Companies Make Money On Individual’s Data?
Some companies haven’t done enough to protect our data, leading to data leaks that have made our private information insecure. Others have sold it to disreputable companies, allowing them to target us for everything from marketing products to influencing elections. These companies use the data collected to make money while not always paying close enough attention to protecting it. In my opinion, the personal data of individuals should be owned by them and not a corporation. Companies have obligation to protect our data from unethical intentions and always ask our consent for using it.
Why Is It Important To Protect Our Personal Data?
To this question, I’d like to share a story of my own about the time when I was in junior high school. My high school is a private school with a prestigious reputation due to high enrollment rate. As a result, a lot of cram schools would call the students and ask them to join the class after school. However, at that time, as one cram school called my classmate again, her father picked up the phone and got extremely furious about it. He sued the cram school and it turned out that it was my school that leaked our personal information to it.
Even though the Internet then wasn’t popular as nowadays, it was a risk of our information hold by others. Since the technology has evolved and the cyber word has change significantly these years, we rely on the Internet much more than ever and we typed almost everything on it. That’s the reason that a data breach, which is an incident that exposes confidential or protected information to an unfamiliar environment, occurs so frequently. Imagine your name, social security number, bank account or credit card numbers was stolen or loss in the world of Internet, someone may have access to your key personal details and you can’t tell what they are going to do about it.
In conclusion, our data is valuable. We might be invisible in the cyber world but what we can do is scrutinize the web and take the necessary precautions beforehand. No protection method is 100% foolproof, but there’s clearly plenty we can do to keep our information safe.
