Written by Kalen Truong “Imagine you’re a secret agent assigned to track someone. How will you do it? Hide in a doorway across the street from his house and wait for him to emerge?” - Eyes and Spies
As we enter in a new era of technologically advances, we no longer think of spies like this. We no longer see FBI agents sitting next to their targets at dinner and eavesdropping on them. There are now different ways to eavesdrop or spy on people : Cameras, phone manufacturers, Internet providers, etc. They could leak your information if they wanted to. However, most of us do not know this! We could be living our ordinary lives, scrolling down our Facebook timeline, and data would be recorded from us without our knowing. What we don’t realize is that what we put on the internet is not private information. It could be retraced from years, years ago and brought up today to ruin and haunt one’s life. In Eyes of Spies, Tanya Lloyd Kyi explains multiple ways on how you’re tracked and why you should know. When you think of the word “privacy”, what do you imagine? Being alone, having the door closed to your guardians? Being free from “public” attention? But what is public? Outside? The mall? Well, the mall in fact, is not public. It is privately owned for the use of business, to sell and buy products. There are security guards and surveillance cameras that monitor the area to see if anyone is disrupting the smooth flow of commerce. Not only are we monitored in malls but mostly everywhere we go! GPS (Global Positioning System), mostly known for guiding people to their pinpoint location, is always watching you from way above, no matter where you’re at on Earth. Some may know that but did you know you can be watched from the cameras on your laptops or phone? In 2010, a case study was done about Invasion of privacy in school. The school district gave out more than 2,000 new laptops to students to use at school or at home. However, the webcams on these laptops could be accessed by school administration. Fifteen-year-old Blake Robbins was accused of taking drugs at home, and when he saw the pictures, he sued the school on invasion of privacy. This kind of spying not only happens by schools, but hackers do as well. Putting a sticky note over your webcams would be the safest choice to avoid unwanted visitors. Another way that people are tracked commonly is on the internet. When people shop online, businesses keep and store this data to help make their business better, and to make recommendations to make the customer buy more products. It really gets strange when a similar product you bought on Amazon appears on Facebook. A personal encounter was when I was searching for clothes online and it appeared on another website as an ad. Most of us today do not know who or what is watching us and where. Is privacy a myth or is there very little of it? The bottom line is to be cautious. I use an app called Signal, which is basically like messenger where you can talk to people but the conversations are encrypted and more hard to be hacked and leaked to. I recommend this app and can be downloaded for free.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorSirena Backham Archives
August 2017
Categories |