Goodbye to Our Data and Rights
How far are we willing to go to stay connected? To stay entertained? To have some semblance of “convenience” and ease of accessibility? Well, I would argue we are willing to go as far as we can because all of those require sacrifices — namely, sacrifices in our privacy, data rights and an overall level of safety. Whenever we go online, we are taking a calculated risk; when we take calculated risks, we can lose everything we have, up to and including our very identity. We struggle to come to grips with what exactly we are risking in exchange for entertainment and convenience. Long, legal contracts are required to be accepted before we use any application. If you venture into the deep unknowns of online dating with apps like Tinder and Bumble, you have to be willing to give up a treasure chest full of your personal information to the parent companies of these apps (that being Match Group, LLC). If you want to download your favorite games like Pokémon Go, you’re giving up your precise location to the company and pretty invasive demographic information about yourself. If you want to use your favorite social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and TikTok without using a pseudonym, you’re giving away the equivalent of your life story to these platforms. The days of having a reasonable expectation of privacy are gone — now, we’re rewarded for voluntarily giving out our information. However, the only thing that is worse than voluntarily giving out our wealth of personal information is involuntarily giving out our information to the plethora of cybercriminals, foreign governments and entities and our “neighbor” with nefarious intent.
There have been many instances of massive data breaches across some of our favorite and most-used sites and applications. There were over 3.2 BILLION (that’s right, billion) records leaked during the COMB event (the Compilation of Many Breaches). Over a third of the world’s population uses Facebook, so when we see data breaches that give up the information of over 533 million users, that’s a pretty big deal too. We can’t even fathom what information is available on us out there in the deep recesses of the internet and the dark web. Perhaps blissful ignorance is the answer in instances like these, but we also should follow safe internet practices to avoid being the victims of every data breach that occurs — and trust me, they occur A LOT.
As is always recommended by nearly every cybersecurity guru and analyst out there (myself included), practicing safe internet usage is crucial to both our online and offline safety. One site I couldn’t recommend enough is https://haveibeenpwned.com/, which will tell you which sites and applications have experienced data breaches involving your email address and/or passwords. Big companies like Facebook, Instagram and TikTok don’t care about us or our personal well-being; they care about profits and avoiding any sort of legal battles they may encounter as a result of their poor practices. They don’t have cybersecurity systems in place for us, they have them in place for saving their own skin. With that said, it can’t be stressed enough to always practice safe internet use!
