The rise of technology has no doubt changed the way we live.
Most of us grew up using a computer from a pretty early age, and it is increasingly shaping the way we interact with one another. People now have no qualms about publicly sharing with hundreds of people their daily activities, thoughts and feelings in 140 characters or less. Sharing things online is the equivalent to putting something on a public bulletin board, and there isn’t much we can do to control who has access to it regardless if only “followers” can see it.
This month, Google changed the way it collects and stores user information, bringing it more in line with companies like Facebook, which collects information from its users and sell it to advertisers. While Facebook and Google have collected information about your interests, your activities, demographic information, etc. for years to share with companies paying to advertise on their sites, both have now removed any practical recourse by which to remove your information from their systems unless you manually tell them to. Google has also begun sharing its information about you more aggressively across its multiple services such as Gmail, Google Plus, Google Search and Youtube, meaning that research you do using Google for a paper on sexually transmitted diseases for your human sexuality class could directly translate into you being targeted by advertisers for venereal disease treatments on websites across the Internet.
When it comes to some Internet site’s services, you and your information are a product to be sold to companies. The information you put on these sites is going to be there forever, even if you change your screen name your senior year to throw off potential employers. Everything you upload to these sites from this point on will be out there too, including pictures, videos or any controversial opinions you share. Most users of these services will probably never suffer any negative consequences from Google’s changes other than perhaps some awkward, misdirected ads showing up. However, it’s not just demographic information that can be shared. It is possible that information such as your credit card number is in a spreadsheet file on a server somewhere, and the identity thief just hasn’t gotten around to you or hasn’t been paid to sell your personal information yet.
Recently, security failures have occurred on [several different sites across the Internet](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-26/sony-says-network-hackers-may-have-stolen-users-personal-data.html). Perhaps because of this, Washington D.C. is starting to take an interest in Internet privacy issues. President Barack Obama has made a [“privacy bill of rights”](http://www.forbes.com/sites/mickeymeece/2012/02/23/president-obamas-consumer-privacy-bill-of-
rights/) that includes things like consumers’ right to transparent and easy-to-understand privacy practices, right to the security of their information, accuracy and accountability.
But let’s be real, unless this is mandated by Congress, and only then if the Internet company lobbyists let them vote it in, [nothing will change anytime soon](http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/23/google-gets-a-high-profile-lobbyist/).
Even if you do a fairly good job of protecting your personal information, keep in mind NASA was [hacked several times last year](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/02/nasa-hack-2011_n_1316797.html), so the free edition of McAfee security toolbar you have been running on your laptop since freshman year isn’t going to protect your identity online if someone really wants it (same goes for Mac users, just because it “doesn’t get viruses” doesn’t mean you won’t compromise your identity if you keep hitting up sketchy sites). If a government agency can’t keep its information out of the wrong hands, what are the chances that the average person will be able to?
Our best protection is probably acknowledging our own irrelevance and making a commitment to share less on the Internet.
