Privacy is not so "Private" anymore

 

"Privacy"

What do you think of when you think of the word privacy? Do you think of something that is not revealed to a larger group? Do you think of something only you know that nobody else knows? Well now privacy is really not so "private" now, it may be private from your friends or family but not the companies that control your information or the government. The invasion of your privacy has become more of a business model than anything else and an excuse for the "big tech" to sell your information and make money off of you. Most companies have what is called an adhesion contract which is a contract in which one party holds all the power and can change the contract whenever they want to. This means that you could have the contract change without you even knowing what changes. Data mining is a way for these companies to collect various bits of information about you and use it however they may choose. They use some of the following to do so; user-generated content, tracking malware, deep packet inspection, voice recognition, and facial recognition. All of these terms are ways for companies such as Google or Facebook to acquire your information and keep it in their database forever.

Two terms that we learned in class that I had never heard of are the 3rd-Party Doctrine and the Shrink-Wrap Contract. The 3rd-Party Doctrine states that when the first party voluntarily gives information to the second party, it relinquishes all control over the use of that information by the third. This blew my mind that your information is essentley distributed and you lose all control of it at that point. The Shrink-Wrap Contract, which makes more sense to me although it doesn't make it less scary, states that once you open the box you agree to certain terms of service and conditions. For me this is visibly seen with Apple products and how once you open it you put your face recognition in, give up your information, and have no control over where that information ends up. Although you give up all this information to Apple, they have always been on the forefront of privacy and one ad campaign that I love is from them. Here it is below;

This ad focuses on over-sharing and how your information may not be as hidden as you may think. Privacy is one of the big reasons I continue to use Apple products and I think they will be on the forefront of privacy for years to come.