Loss Of Privacy On The Internet
Nowadays, the Internet plays an important role in people’s life and work for example education and self-improvement, friendship and dating, electronic newspapers and magazines, entertainment and gaming, and it gradually becomes an indispensable part of human. How much of personal life have people shared on social media? According to Statista (2017), 66% of people in the age of 25-34 and 64% of people at the age of 16-24 uploaded or shared a video in the third quarter of 2017. Unarguably, technology and social media are involving faster every day. Since the Information Age, there are numerous widely debated arguments about the advancement that have been raised. One of the most debated issues is the loss of privacy when using Internet. It is not worth losing online privacy as it leads to online abuse and disclosure of personal information for business and promotion purposes.
In the first place, loss of privacy on the internet raise the number of people abused on the Internet. In the current political and social atmosphere, online harassment and abuse are subjects that remain uneasily in the cutting edge of discussions around the uneven impacts of arranged advances and data streams. The chance of men and women have to suffer online harassment is equal, especially young adults, LGBT and people with inappropriate appearance which does not conform to human standards. According to Center for Innovative Public Health Research (2016), 47% of internet users have experienced online harassment or abuse and 36% of internet users have experienced direct harassment, such as being called offensive names, being threatened physically, or being stalked. When being abused on the internet, people seem to be scared and worried and they become more careful before posting anything on the Internet. Some cases even worse as most of those people who were abused are soft people. They often are obsessed and have self-deprecating thoughts then it gradually become depression and they might have a thought of commit suicide. Just some seemingly harmless negative comments about someone’s body, or gender, could leave a deep hurt in that person. For instance, people who are being laughed by their looks, or have to suffer body shaming, are just like kids who have to suffer from wounds inflicted by others and they can carry this obsession for life without being released from it. When a child feels ostracised by his appearance, he may believe that he is not normal or he will be less likely to erode their sense of deserve to be loved. This may lead to a result that he want to change to improve his look, however, even he succeed in changing but he might still be obsessed by that idea. Besides, some teenagers have some symptoms of depression about their looks or even worse, their obsession about their weight make them has bad effects on their studying or being scare of eating then it may lead to eating disorder such as anorexia.
Moreover, it will not only affect a person but also his family and relatives. For example, the newspaper The Guardian (2016) report that Ding Jinhao, a teenager from the city of Nanjing, understands the dangers better than most. In May 2013 he was the target of a furious online campaign after another internet user accused him of carving the phrase “Ding Jinhao was here” into an ancient Egyptian temple while on holiday. Tens of thousands of Chinese internet users shared reports of Ding’s infraction. His personal details and school address were published online to shame him and his school’s website was hacked. So ferocious was the offensive against Ding that his family was forced to issue an online apology for his behaviour. That was so serious that his mom had to apologized Chinese people in general and Chinese teenagers for his behaviour. In addition, the school and local authorities had to go on and reassure teenagers to avoid the worst cases which might came out that would affect Ding’s personal life and information also. Consequently, Internet is undeniably a wonderful source of information and people can upload and say anything on it, but be careful with words as it might creat the abilities of abusing others and lead to bad consequences.
Yet another reason why the loss of privacy information on Internet is unacceptable is that recording and stealing private information for business purposes is not an extraordinary problem for many people using Internet. With the growth of Internet and social media, there are more opportunities than ever before to steal identities online and it could be an effective tool for criminals. Gabriel Garcia Marquez (2015) once said “All human beings have three lives: public, private and secret. ” and with social networks, people choose to share their public information and may be some of their secrets but they did not know that somehow, their private information is also be shared to others. Furthermore, those private information could be recorded by the government. Some people believed that there is a handful of reasons why the government records and takes privacy of citizens as they want to protect people from terrorist but it is not that necessary. Government and concerned agencies might just use that as an excuse to satisfy their desire ruling. “The more someone know about us, the more power they can have over us” . Just imagine how unfair and magisterial it is when you are talking on the phone with your best friend and the government sneakily listen to the conversation or have your fingerprint on your cutting-edge technologies on file of The National Security Agency or have your phone, your email, your social network accounts accessed by the government while we even do not know anything about them. Hence, it is obvious that giving up your online privacy seems not worth.
Moreover, when people share their private information to the Internet, those information would be used for numerous purposes in business which definitely not beneficial to users. For example, when a person post his own information and agree to the website’s policy, it means he had consent to use the website’s cookies in accordance with the terms of its policy and the website is able to treat those info. It will collect, store not only basic personal information like his name, age, email address, phone number, card details but also his IP address, geography location, browser type and version, etc. After that, private information submitted to website may be used to administer the website, send non-marketing commercial communications and marketing communications relating to its business of carefully-selected third parties… Moreover, those private identities could be sold as a commodity to companies and marketing firms which called “Data Broker”. US Senator John D. Rocketeler reveals that in 2012, Data Broker industry generated $156 billion in revenues with the amount of companies which collect, store, analyse and sell private data is increasing rapidly. According to Eric Porres (2015), marketing manager of a company in New York named Lotame Solution, they sell an information package of 1000 people interested in movies or 26-year-old men who fond of 50 First Dates movie with the price of one USD. Moreover, a research of an American newspaper named “The Wall Street Journal” (2014) claimed that in 2013, top 50 websites in US has an average of 64 different surveillance programs and most of them does not has warming. Those proprietary information was sold like stock packages on market and that is the reason why there is pointless in losing privacy due to its non-beneficial for users.
However, on the one hand, some people believe that by agreeing with the privacy policy, people can generate money and make a profession by developing their online profiles. Numerous people have successfully gained some money on the Internet. Zoella, a famous vlogger, earns at least £50,000 a month by mainly sharing her experience in using beauty products on Youtube. Started off creating a Youtube account solely to post videos on Youtube and to share her interest and her advice on anxiety, she received a lot of support from viewers and gained more than twelve millions subscribers on Youtube. After a while of making Youtube videos, she wrote books (Girl Online), opened her own brand of beauty products, cooperated with other Youtubers and made workshops, and founded a book club. Thus, by sharing her life and her personal interests, she created brand new opportunities for her to develop her online profile and even gained more followers with her open personality, her talent and her beauty. Without doubt, with the benefit of making money online, losing privacy is justified. On the other hand, in fact, since social network is immense, information people put on the Internet can make money, fame and connection for them but somehow, it will be stored and even if a person try to delete their uploaded information, it can still easily recover by hackers or programmers.
As we know, the Internet, especially social media, is like a net, people cannot control it like they control television or newspaper so it can be easily to understand the reason why people scare of it. Lindsey Gentile once said: “Social media can make your career but do not forget that it can break your career just as fast. If not, faster. ” Just one picture or speech you posted on social network and it can destroy your life. That was the case of Ashley Payne, a teacher in Georgia who was asked to resign from her job because she made use of the term “b*tch” in a playful manner and also posted a picture of herself with a glass of wine in one hand and a beer in the other hand on Facebook. She used to be a favourite teacher of students as she was really close to them and be friend with them through social media. Students can ask for her help with not only their study but also their daily life. That is not the only case of people who ruined their career by losing privacy online, it can be found numerous similar cases like this when you search on Google. “We are very humiliated about what we do online, because when we are online, we can all behave ebulliently and weirdly,” said Kyle Wagner (2009), one of the popular technology blogger on Gizmodo. There would be one day that what we have done online for a while may going to make us shameless for the whole life so be careful if you do not want your future career ruined by losing private information on the Internet.
Overall, the Internet is a very risky place to exposure yourself on. It cannot be denied that the loss of personal information is already a huge loss for people who have information be stolen or recorded and used it as people’s advantage for business and profit. Also, the risk of being on social media that can harm one’s life badly if users exposure themselves too much. This generation has revealed themselves too much without knowing the risk of their information can backfire their own life. This is not about trying to appeal to someone for stop using the Internet but people should be aware of the information before they decide to share on the Internet if they do not want to suffer any bad consequences.
