Every time you get on the Internet whether it is checking social media, posting onto social media, or making a purchase you are giving small pieces of your privacy away. It has been a huge controversy for years now, ever since we started using Facebook our parents were telling us to “watch what we put on the web,”along with personally monitoring your profile. We don’t realize it, but even the pictures we put online are telling people our personal life like what we look like, our interests, around where we live, and much more than that.
I have learned in life that nothing comes truly free. The “cost of free”, means that yes at that moment you are not paying for it monetarily, but you are giving away personal aspects about your life without knowing. As this episode mentioned, Gmail takes what you are writing in an email and uses that for advertisements. If you are talking about your dog they will show you advertisements of pet crates on Amazon. Facebook gives the posts that you like and the data from your profile as well as the links you go to through their website to advertisers and companies. For example, I like American Eagle so everyday I am shown what they are advertising and the new clothes they have out. I works too, I see a top I like and I open their site and 9 times out of 10 I will buy it.
In today’s society there are many more risks of being on the Internet than there were when this episode first aired. Now people have evolved to use what we post, share, buy, etc. against us. Recently, I was almost scammed by people who used my school email to advertise a new job. They also used a bunch of “dummy emails”, which are emails with our school address, but they aren’t actual students. So these scammers used what they call a “fishing” scam and they lure you in with something that you will gain and it seems harmless. They send you another dummy email with their company’s email address and say to apply and the job descriptions. They ask for your personal information such as your name, address, email address, phone number, and gender. Well I found out that these people were sending bad checks to people in our school and probably others and if you deposit that check into your bank account they then have control over your account. Fortunately, I did not fall victim to this scam, but this is just one of the many threats the Internet and users therein can use against others.
Rhianna Drieu 