The Hidden Breach Of Digital Privacy
If you ever get the feeling that you are being monitored when you are using your laptop, smartphone, or even smart speakers then I am here to tell you you are! Last week, I was talking to a friend on Hangouts that I wanted to buy a mattress for my bed, and guess what? He and I both had sponsored advertisements of mattress companies on our Facebook home. Although the ad could be useful, it was an out of the blue event for us because we have never searched or liked any mattress or even furniture companies on Facebook. I was utterly shocked as it was not the first time it happened to me, so I could not ignore it by calling it a mere coincidence.
Who does it?
In recent years, Facebook and Google were the top two companies that also faced heavy lawsuits for privacy misuse. Consequently, you would think that if you can avoid these two companies in any way (or maybe three if you have another suspect), you will be free from privacy breach but that’s not true! Almost every big company has manipulated their terms and conditions to breach the digital privacy of users.
Why do they do it?
Over the years, I have heard this question being raised many times “Why do companies struggle so hard to get our information?”. After seeing the news of an 8.8 billion $ lawsuit against the two giant companies, I asked myself whether my information was worth it for the companies? While this question remains a dilemma to me, I have found some satisfactory answers. The institutional bodies like the FBI need access to such amounts of data that they can get from these companies. What does this information providing companies get in-return? MORE MONEY!
How does it work?
When you make an account on any platform or install a program in your device, you click on the I Agree to the Terms and Conditions box without going through the unending document of their terms. This is the first step towards the slaughter of digital privacy. By clicking on the checkbox, you agree that the company or service can use your data for the betterment of user experience (as they say it). How do they use it? they mention it no-where in the document. Surprisingly, I was wrong to think that major companies like Google or Facebook collect the most data.
WAIT! WHAT? Could there be any bigger guy than these giants? When it comes to privacy breaching, no one comes close to the add-on or extensions that we add in our browser for different utilities. I call them little demons. There are 188,620 extensions available just on google chrome which offers services like VPN, ad-blocker, take-a-screenshot, and what-not. Every extension has access to every page you visit and they can monitor all the activities you do. There is no absolute way to detect which extension is “actually” using your data. These extensions can contain your usernames, passwords, and even credit card information.
End of Discussion
Whether we like it or not, we are all part of this system and there is not much we can do about it. The most important thing is we should be well aware of how and what information we should put online. The companies claim that they use the collected data only to make the user experience better. While they might be wrong at the only part but my heart could not disagree with them completely. After all, who would not want to see the ads of those things which they were already planning to buy? I asked myself.
Let’s say your data was breached by a company. Unless it has a direct impact on you, it can be hard to understand what you should actually be scared of.
-Laura kankaala (Security Lead at Robocorp)
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