What is privacy on social media?

Usually we think of privacy as a way to keep our lives private or not sharing a lot with others. But, how do we have privacy on social media? There are millions of people around the world who have social media accounts. When making an account we need to agree to the privacy terms and conditions but do we really read them? No, we hit "agree" and move on with the account. These privacy terms are very important to understand so we know what are consenting to. Rowenna Fielding reads those terms and conditions so we don't have to. 

As I was listening to a podcast about privacy on social media with Rowenna Fielding and Lorrie Cranor, a professor at Carnegie Mellon and director of CyLab Security and Privacy Institute, they really made me think about all the apps I have downloaded on my phone or will continue to download. They discuss how social media makes their privacy terms very long and full of words we will not understand-which I agree with. We usually just download and use the app. We are not truly understanding how these apps on our smart devices are using our personal information such as location, passwords, and even photos!

The podcast mentions an example of how someone linked an app they use to their thermostat where every time he leaves the house, all the lights would turn off, which is pretty neat when you first hear about it. But then, he moved out and reset his thermostat...at least he thought he did. He was getting notifications about the new home owners every time they left the house which is a complete invasive of privacy. This had me thinking about the things I share on social media because it's not really only what I put out there, it's a lot more. I started to think about how I would use social media in the classroom and how that would effect the privacy of my students, it is definitely something to think about and be extra cautious with what we put out there, especially with young children. 

                                           

                                                         Image Source: University of Wisconsin-Madison

Why Do I Care?

Privacy on the internet is just as important as privacy in our real lives. On social media, there are many ways for your private information to be revealed. We all have things in our lives we want to keep private such as prescriptions, secrets, careers, or even live footage of the inside of our homes. Christopher Soghoian and Will Potter give a TED Talk about why we should care about privacy online and how we can protect it. 

                                                            Image Source: Fat Guy Media

You may think "who will be watching me?". Will Potter says we need to think about who is out there that we would be worried about accessing our private information and what can we do to limit this. The first thing they mention is the cameras on out devices such as laptops and cellphones. They have cameras that anyone can have access to. They recommend covering the camera on your personal device so you can now trust that no one can see through your camera as you are using your personal devices. 

Another thing I think was interesting was the microphones on our devices. We all know when we mention certain things around our phones, we start to get ads on that particular thing. This proves that there is someone listing to our conversations. They mention a great point in saying not to take our phones with us when discussing or talking about private things because then anyone can now have knowledge of your privacy. 

How Can I Protect Myself?

Image Source: Change.org

 David Pogue wrote an article that gives great ways we can avoid hackers on the internet:

• Use DuckDuckGo instead of Google → does not track you or your searches
• Trick Google → search random things you do not have interest in to "confuse" Google
• Do not use public Wifi
• Use private mode on search tabs 
• Do NOT "sign in with Google" or "sign in with Facebook" →  this is a shortcut to track all your information