# Privacy

## Privacy Footprint

A web search of my name only revealed two results about me. In the initial search, my Instagram came up. I expected this to happen as it is public. Nothing even close to me came up in the image search, but an IMBD picture of my cousin, Tim Beckmann, came up as he is an actor. In the video search, my youtube channel came up. This is what shocked me the most, as I literally made the channel for the purpose of uploading a mix of me playing drums to send in for college applications.


While looking at what google knew about me, I was not surprised to learn that it basically had me down to a tee. Obviously it had all the records of things that I’d searched, but more interestingly it was pretty much spot on with the targeted advertising preferences for me and my interests.

## Response

“When tracks like these are collected from multiple sources they can paint a detailed picture of our activities, our interests, our finances, and many other aspects of our lives. In the most benign setting, that information is used to help advertisers target us more accurately, so that we will see advertisements that we are likely to respond favorably to. But the tracking need not stop there, and its results can be used for much less innocent purposes, including redlining on the basis of income or worse, financial theft, identify theft, government surveillance, and even physical harm” (Kernighan). At what point is it too much? Obviously there are benefits for people to put their information out online— otherwise, people wouldn’t do it. But with the good comes the bad and the ugly, and we want to and need to avoid those at all costs. Most people are simply too naive to the fact that their information is out there, easily accessible. Because of the general lack of public awareness in this field, people and organizations can maliciously take advantage of this. If you know everything there is to know about someone, it’s not that hard to assume their identity— and completely ruin their lives. “... the act of reaching out makes you visible and accessible throughout the world, where not everyone has your best interests at heart. That opens the door to spam, scams, spyware, viruses, tracking, surveillance, identify theft, and loss of your privacy and even your money. It’s wise to be wary” (Kernighan).

If we are mindful enough, we can easily protect our privacy online, keeping the benefits of digital communication and the internet without the drawbacks. One of the main things we can do to protect ourselves has to do with our passwords. As we talked about in class, using something like password manager is a good idea. The majority of hacks happen due to the simplicity of one’s password, or a password being used across multiple platforms. Additionally, we just need to be mindful of what we have available as public information. For example, my Instagram profile is public. Anyone can view it. Through that, they could figure out what I look like, my approximate age, what high school I went to, and what university I go to. And I’m okay with that. I’m comfortable with that information being available to the public. But I don’t have any sensitive information on there that I would rather keep private. And that’s what it comes down to; we need to be constantly aware of what is available on the web, and what we are putting there.