The Privacy of the Internet

 We are at a time that makes technology the most important thing in our lives. Everyone has a smartphone, or computer or some form smart technology. This isn't something that people can ignore anymore, people are forced to get something whether it is for communication, work or even just travel. We are surrounded by technology but we don't really know the power of the technology and the access that they have to your life. In the image below and through an article on pcmag.com, websites have a ton of information about you, like your name, image, birthday and a lot of other information but those are the things that you have to give them.

As said, these are what you need to give these companies, you can give Twitter your name, gender and birthday, they just aren't required. You are giving these big companies so much information about you just to have an account and you don't know what they are doing with that information. They are a business and they want to make as much money as possible so you do not know what they are doing. There has been times where these big companies have been hacked and someone has had access to all of this information and more about all of the users. 

You are not just being traced online, but all throughout life you are being tracked, whether it is by police and your car and gps, or through security, you are almost always being watched. People know a lot about you, people you have never seen or will never meet. The new era of technology creates what is supposed to be a safe bubble of having people know everything about you but is actually just a target for people with bad intentions. But can the government do anything about this stuff? They can, they can regulate what businesses ask for, but they won't. The government works with some of these companies to find information on people, so why would they want less security and give up information. The issue isn't that you can have a hacker find information about you, it's the amount of people who have information about you, and who know everything about you, even the things you want to keep hidden.

There are ways to keep yourself and your information safe, there are companies who goal it is to help people protect their information. VPN's, or Virtual Private Networks, are additions that you can make to your computer that basically encrypt your data so it is harder to track and this protects you from things like hackers or websites that do things such as track your location. Norton, who is one of those companies also has a list of different ways to protect your data. They recommend not going on shady websites, searching on incognito, and just be aware of the information you share. 

Technology is tough these days, its tough to avoid the amount of data you are giving out to others and there is a lot of information that people have on you just because you do things like leave the house, own a phone or even just own a car. It doesn't seem like the government would stop this because they are one of the groups that benefits from this break of security, but there are ways to limit the amount of data that get out to these companies and people need to be more aware of those options.