Okay fine, I’ll admit it. I have not been as concerned about my security online as I should be. To be fair, nothing treacherous has happened with my information… as far as I know.
I’ve always been extremely careful with my debit card information. And realistically the joke would be on anyone who stole my debit card.
However, after this module, I realize there is much more information of mine to go around than just my bank information.
In this week’s article by Shoshana Zuboff called, “The Secrets of Surveillance Capitalism“, I learned that my data is being sold. There was once a time when I innocently thought Google and Facebook were completely free with no consequence and life was sunny and wonderful. Now I know that people are profiting off of my activity (which I would be okay with if they shared some of the profit… just a suggestion).
So here goes my controversial opinion on that… Yes, this is intrusive. Yes, I deserve personal privacy. HOWEVER! I am a participant on Facebook, on Google, on Instagram, on Amazon, and many other sites that both have my information and present ads. If I am to be subjected to these ads, I’d rather them be personalized to the things that are relevant to me rather than random ads for weekly vegan grocery boxes or season tickets to sports games (aka things I want no part in).
I suppose this would be a big reason why I don’t plan on changing my approach to security. I exercise caution when it comes to which websites I put my information into. When I receive emails from “appleinfo3@mpdazidyqpedyvxlwa.com” requesting that I log into my Apple account to change my password, I am savvy enough to resist.
That said, I am not in a career where I need to store the information of others. I do not have secrets stored in my computer or phone. I primarily use the internet for school, staying in contact with friends, Netflix, and Amazon shopping sprees (explaining the debit card statement earlier in this post). I don’t feel that I am at high risk to be hacked.
The one thing I will be more vigilant is something I learned from the Lifehacker article called “Top 10 Tech Security Basics Every Person Should Follow“. I rarely open the app store on my iPhone, which is where all the updates appear when apps need to be updated. Whenever I do actually open the app store, there are always a huge number of apps that need to be updated – ones that I have put my personal information into. This article reminds me to update these programs as well as cleaning the app permissions. I think I’ll make this change because it’s so simple and it seems to be very effective.
