Is our Privacy on the Internet Safe?
How safe is the internet? The internet can be a very dangerous place as everything a person shares about themselves will forever be on the world wide web and can be very difficult and near impossible to find every trace of that information to remove it. This can be particularly dangerous when a person's identity is taken and faked by bots. This situation could be harmful to the individual themselves and also the community around that individual that doesn't know that their identity has been stolen and faked by a bot. Potential outcomes could be that people who trust that individual would share private information including their residential information or their contact information such as their mobile numbers or email addresses.
Technology that has been created to make our lives easier have also been shown to collect information on you as you use it.
A voice activate device such as Amazon's Alexa was invented to make peoples life more efficient by activating functions such as turning on and off lights and playing music through voice detected commands. But that begs the question. Is Alexa always on? What type of information is Alexa recording?
In fact, products like Alexa are always recording even when an individual doesn't activate the appliance through voice. Products like these are linked to an algorithm that deciphers a person's daily activities and provides marketing recommendations that they would potentially be interested in on social media websites such as Facebook and Instagram.
To avoid unwanted leakage of privacy, it is advised that consumers review the product and understand the risk it may bring into the household. There are settings that could be changed from Alexa that enable you to select what information you what to allow the appliance to receive. Furthermore, safety on the internet can be implemented as well by having unique and difficult passwords that a personal to you with a range of mixed characters, using different passwords for different accounts and also not enabling information bits called 'cookies'. These 'cookies' allow you to have shortcuts such as remembering your account for easy access later on, however, these bits can be decoded and hacked exposing the information to your personal accounts.
Do you consider your usage of the internet safe? Would you ever use a product such as Alexa knowing the risk?
-Huy
Great discussion! I personally don't think the internet is super safe, but we can't not use it! It has become a need for many of us, but luckily many of us, like myself, have protection software on that alerts of any problems or threats. While the internet isn't perfect and does pose many risks, I think there are ways to limit the possibility of any of the negative consequences that accompany the internet.
ReplyDeleteAs far as an Alexa, I have not got one, and cannot see myself getting one anytime soon. I believe that they are always on, and there is nothing being done about it due to limited knowledge and/or mass ignoring of the problem! So, that is one way I will try prevent my privacy being invaded over the internet!
- Peta :)
Please check out my blog: https://petesdigitalchat.wordpress.com/2020/10/07/marketing-the-magpie-profession/
I totally agree with what your saying about the necessity that the internet brings to our everyday lives! But for sure! People can use the internet safely under the right precautions
Delete-Huy
With the correct guidance on how to be internet safe, you can always make attempts to prevent these risks from occuring. There are multiple applications avaliable that allow you to be internet safe. As for Alexa, there have been multiple privacy breaches that have occured thus i do not believe i shall own Alexa anytime soon or at all.
ReplyDeleteI too do not believe in my purchases of Alexa any time soon. I just don't think it serves enough of a purpose in my everyday life to be using it. I think having it do easily activities such as turning off light would cause me to become lazy. And the cost to change to a lightbulb that is calibrated to Alexa is definitely more than the physical movement to turn it off myself.
DeletePersonally I would still use these devices and services regardless of the fact if they are secretly collecting information as we use them due to the fact that I myself already use other social media platforms.
ReplyDeleteThat is true. Regardless of what the product is, information on you being collected seems inevitable nowadays. It is more important to focus on the type of information you are letting to be leaked rather than where it is getting collected from.
DeleteInsightful post, I personally think that it is extremely difficult with todays day and age to successfully manage this. However, I do agree with your education statement, I think consumers need to successfully mitigate this risks through informing themselves
ReplyDeleteI appreciate it Krystal. Yes education is the key to combatting most things in life nowadays. Similar to studying to reduce illness and diseases or human rights to reduce wars, the education to reduce harm done by hackers is extremely important in my opinion.
DeleteVery insightful discussion! I think the benefits of the internet far outweigh the dangerous implications as long as we are careful with how we use them. As for Alexa, It’s very alarming knowing the risks however, great for future disability care and accessibility reasons. Great work!
ReplyDeleteThank you very much. That is a very interesting point about it helping our disability care and accessibility for them. Personally I didn't think of the product in this light, but it does make sense on why it would be very effective for that situation. Thank you for sharing your opinion on that, it has allowed me to have a new point of view on products such as Alexa as a problem solver for something more than just making us lazier as a race.
DeleteUndoubtedly the internet can dangerous place. However, there are small things you could do to be more internet safe and prevent situations of your personal information from being leaked. Regarding Alexa, although it may be scary that it can record your voice and recommend products, your phone does the same with recording what you do on your screen. Alexa helps to make everyday tasks more convenient therefore there are more benefit to it than negatives.
ReplyDeleteYes of course. There are definitely ways to prevent information from being leaked. It is important that people try their best to even though it may be harder to have a different password for everything. The fact is, that little bit of effort to create new passwords for all your different accounts can result in a less dramatic damage if something does get hacked.
Delete