Digital Privacy

# Digital Privacy During my sophomore year of high school, I received a 0 for an assignment in chemistry. When I inquired about the reason, I discovered it was because I put down "Vishakh T" as my name, as opposed to "Vishakh Talanki". Reluctantly, I added the 6 extra letters and waited another week for my grade to update. Due to my parents giving me a rather unique name, my digital privacy situation is rather unique. For example, some of my friends have more common names. When signing up for online services such as email or social media, their usernames are usually their name, with a string of numbers after. Mine's just my name. I've never had to add on a string of numbers, nor has the username I've wanted ever been taken. When I google my friends, all I find are pictures of random people, or occasionally a news article. When my friends google me, articles, images, and videos all show up. Even though most people don't go past the first page of results on google - they just change the search words - I still show up on the 7th page, and even further. --- ## My Identity ![](https://i.imgur.com/NWiQapJ.png) Most of these results are things that I expect: my profiles from various websites. While I don't particularly remember the 3rd result, the rest is familiar. --- ![](https://i.imgur.com/ac9Wnjd.jpg) Most of these images are from profile pictures, video thumbnails, or pictures from news articles. One interesting phenomenon is that, since Google+ was taken down (April 2019), photos of my friends and I show up much less frequently. --- ![](https://i.imgur.com/NIkOZlT.png) The videos follow a similar pattern. The first two are videos of performances from my childhood (thanks mom). The second two, I presume, come up when my name is searched because I commented on those videos. --- ## Intelius Search Doing a free search yielded some interesting, but not accurate information. I've chosen to omit an image as to not further expose my information. Both my parents come up as results. However, there are misspelled names and incorrect phone numbers. --- ## What your browser knows about you Upon using this website, I was able to see how much information the web can have regarding me. I used this website on my laptop, but I suspect that if I were to open it on mobile, they would take even more information (due to the phone having more sensors). While I understand some information may contribute to my experience, I can't imagine why facebook needs to know my battery percentage. --- ## Google While it's common knowledge that Google has a scary amount of information about everyone, it's still surprising to see how much they have. Since I have an android phone, they really do have a lot: from what time I wake up to how many times I open a certain app. --- ## Social Networks Social Media is all about sharing with family and friends. However, we still want our privacy. While I do keep most of my social media on private, I did still change some Facebook settings. --- In the end, the internet is a huge place. We can try to protect our digital privacy by changing privacy settings, but our information will always be found. In fact, a couple of days ago, my dad sent me a link to a previous reading response. Turns out, googling my name also yields my HackMD page. So dad, if you're seeing this, hi! Companies do have some impact on this. Metcalfe's law says that the value of a network is proportional to the square of the number of users. Meanwhile, Reed's law states that the value of the network is proportional to 2^N, where N is the number of users. Therefore, it would be in a companies best interests to get lots of users and form as many connections as they can. However, they've started to be slightly unethical about it. Cara McGoogan states [here](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2016/08/09/how-did-facebook-get-my-number-and-why-is-it-giving-my-name-out/) that facebook has been acquiring phone numbers in order to boost connections without users consent. As stated by Kernighan, It's wise to be wary. The internet is a big and scary place. It's a great way to connect with loved ones, but it's also prone to hackers and people with malintent.