Your Privacy Matters!
Authors: Vishnupriya Ganesh, Apurba Kumar & Rainar Angelo
When you are blindly in love with your smartphone, pause for a second to think of data privacy. Your smartphone matters to you but you only matter to your smartphone because of your data!
Technology has become an inevitable part of our lives today. None of us are aware of the exact impact that it creates both at the macro and micro level. Nevertheless we are all well aware of the fact that the world is data (in other words power) hungry today. Data is power since the world is ruled by capitalism.
Our data is like a treasure to the business firms that run the digital world today and social media is the "oxygen" of these firms - keeping it alive. Today, jobs for data scientists and machine language experts are in high demand. Not too long ago, programs were created and utilized for simple tasks. Unfortunately, now they have evolved into mega-minds that can sharply dig and collect data from systems.
The pace at which technology and legislation grows are at an imbalanced state. Since the nature of technology growth brings out issues such as data privacy, stalking, bullying, etc. The people immersed in their digital screens are not aware of the data privacy issues and how much it matters. This is best exemplified in the documentary, “The Great Hack”, available on Netflix.
Let’s look at privacy and the lack thereof in action. For instance, when you meet a stranger you think twice before giving them any info about you for your safety. Yet, when we sign up for new apps and features on our phones, we lose the sense of safety because this is a device…not a person. If this lack of cautiousness in knowing about your smartphone on a deeper level and why privacy is something you should think about continues, then so does the cycle of ignorant victimhood. Ultimately, this vicious cycle demands vital protections against the harmful use of our data.
Since smart phone use is inevitable, one needs to be smart enough to use them. How can we become smart enough to use our smart phones? This is the right question to ask. Following the below mentioned ways would be helpful to keep you and your data safe:
Read before accepting cookies
Think twice before sharing sensitive data of yours
Reading terms and conditions before using an app
Keeping yourself updated about malware apps and having a check on your apps usage
Never share your passwords on unsafe websites
Having awareness on safe and unsafe websites
Though, some companies use data to serve people. Better, tech companies that use people's data should be transparent about the way it is being used.
