Privacy

As technology and new media advances, there comes the increasing concern of privacy. With several social media platforms, we tend to share personal information which could be collected by data brokers, who sell our information to a third party and used for targeted ads or even by hackers who may use our data for malicious intent. Additionally, confidentiality and privacy have been compromised especially with recent scandals involving big social media companies, such as Facebook and its numerous hacking scandals in which personal data from millions of users were stolen or collected for targeted ads, possibly criminal activity, and even for propaganda reasons. When we sign up for different accounts and use them on various devices, your data trail and history follows you wherever you go. For example, you can search for flights for a certain country on your laptop one day and be able to receive ads about that flight on your phone minutes later. Additionally, when you use new media platforms, you leave a digital footprint and it allows these third parties, such as companies and agencies, to build a profile about you and allows them to know how to target their advertisements more effectively for their consumer. With anything you put on the internet, it is difficult to keep personal information confidential due to these issues of data breaches and data mining. This is why it's important to be aware of what personal information you put out on the internet as well as take extra precautions when using these sites in order to protect your privacy and try to keep it as confidential as you can.