Privacy on the Internet

What Can Go Wrong?

The Internet can be a scary place. Internet literacy is not particularly taught in schools, but things like typing and downloading applications are. Generally, Internet safety is taught through trial and error. At least, that is what happened for me. 

Interconnectivity is not necessarily a good thing. When your personal information is required every day to complete purchases, read newsletters, or talk to other people online, it is easy to experience a breach of data. For example, when I took my first PSAT in seventh grade, I consented to having my email available to colleges on the form. I was barely thirteen years old, and I am still facing the consequences of
allowing my email to be given for free. 

I get emails to this day asking about my applications to
places I have never heard of, and when I try to unsubscribe, they just make another email account and continue to spam me. I have gotten my school email hacked, my personal email hacked, and my Instagram hacked before. The school email being hacked was the one that was the most shocking to me, since it was an email that I had sent to myself, threatening pictures to be leaked if I did not sent money. However, I knew these images did not exist, so I felt free to change my password and ignore the email. 

Others may not be so technologically literate. Any kind of link is suspicious, and as an avid technology user, I know exactly what kinds of information hackers can have access to. Phone scams are also relatively common, as phone numbers are generally sold to companies without people's consent, but I almost never answer my phone to a number I do not know. 

There are the classic grandparent scams where someone over the phone pretends to be their grandchild and request money or they would get deported (or similar requests) that elderly people are not aware of the dangers of. In addition, deepfake AI programs only need about a minute of human voice to recreate someone's voice quite accurately, so it is not difficult to fake sounding like someone. 

The Government's Job

The government is not doing a good job of preventing information leaks like this. Although legal, it is morally questionable for companies like Facebook and Twitter to be selling our information. We do agree to this in the terms of service, but this is a contract of adhesion, or a contract in which one party has much more power than the other. In addition, the concept of Third-Party Doctrine means that once a second party has our information, then nothing stops them from selling it to a third party. The government should address this, because it is not good for our security or privacy in the US. 

Requiring this information in the first place is illogical and unnecessary, and companies should be required to argue to request it. For example, there is no reason for an online newspaper to require my phone number, address, email, and credit card information. Email may be helpful in case I want to subscribe, but I often put in my email and then it signs me up without my consent. 

Other things that should not be legal are deepfakes created without the person's consent, and more money should be directed to the cybersecurity of the nation. We are much further behind than the field is, especially considering how quickly AI develops, and top cybersecurity experts should be hired in force to work for the government, even more than already. 

What Can We Do?

There are steps that can be taken, though, to protect ourselves from our information being leaked. I do not have my phone number connected to my Instagram account, which has personally saved me once. A phone number is all you need to find someone's home address, previous
addresses, criminal records, full names, and family members (and more if you are willing to pay). I also use an alternative email account to sign up for newsletters and for purchases, and there are also programs that let you use temporary phone numbers to sign up for things. 

The most useful thing you can do to protect yourself from Internet scams and malware is to download an adblocker and avoid any sketchy links. Adblockers will get rid of unnecessary links that you could possibly click, as well as eliminate popups that want your information. Some links look similar to real links, but it is easy to check using an online link checker. For files, I also use something like virustotal.com that will verify the file or link before clicking on it. As someone that is almost always on the Internet, I have learned to become very safe with my information. However, I actually discourage use of antiviruses, as I think they limit the things I can do on my computer.