Virtual spying is a virtual threat

This text maintains the question whether people protect their online privacy. The focus is also on their hesitation of classifying the massive collection of their online tracks.

Frequently, scientists and journalists observe our society’s behaviour towards online privacy. Indeed, they are often shocked that people, especially Germans, are very careless about their online privacy. In the opinion of the German Federal Ministry of Justice and Consumer Protection and the initiative DsinN they either don’t know or don’t care about online security. In the last years, people made only little ‘progress’ which is astonishing regarding the outcomes about the methods of the NSA and how Facebook, Google and others save and sell personal data. Many internet users even know about the dangers and problems but they don’t mind. As a matter of fact, there are loads of users, mostly elderly people, who have no idea how to protect their online privacy and they surf on the web, however. But I want to focus on the group, predominantly teenagers and young adults under 30, which is well-informed but still quite careless.

I personally am part of this type of ‘group’, so I can identify pretty well with the way they think and with their opinions to other topics than privacy. Moreover, I have to admit that I am one of the people who are optimistic and believe that sometimes things will be fine independently. Therefore, I also don’t take too much care of my online data and online security. It is a problem and I sometimes reflect on why people are so careless about the virtual harassments – which become real afterwards, indeed. In my opinion, the point is in the word virtual. I use it for everything that is not materialistic and is worthless as an item. For instance, movies have always been virtual, long before computers and internet for everybody have developed. It went on with computer games and TV series, where one does feel many emotions, for sure. Notwithstanding, he or she can always switch-off the screen and is pretty much ‘freed’ from what has touched his feelings and emotions. Virtual media is mostly brain-work and only brain-work, one won’t start sweating watching a football match and won’t smell and feel the pain of a person that gets killed by a dozen of gunshots in a brilliant action movie. Of course, the emotion is existing but in each single moment it is possible to break and make sure that everything seen is fictive, even if it is a documentation, in some way ‘far away’. Human’s consciousness has arranged with processing this type of virtual information which can touch feelings and emotions but it can also be blocked and is not that intense like situations in reality.

In my view these findings can explain the little concerns about online privacy for many, often younger, people. They can no more differentiate between virtual information that can be forgotten and one that touches or affects them directly. A real spy watching over the shoulder while one checks his or her mails is far more impressive than a real spy being at another place and copying each mail, message, picture etc. for his, a company’s or a government’s interests.

But isn't the underestimating of this threat the obvious danger to our privacy?

The revealed information of internet user has both advantages and disadvantages. Internet users get the chance of a free access to websites and online platforms. Entertainment Websites as Facebook and Youtube offer social network and videos any time it is requested. In return they collect the user’s data. The user pays for consenting surveillance of what they say, where they go, who they know, what they like, what they watch and what they buy in the web.

On the one hand this entertainment benefits the user and creates a personified web and online search that makes it easier to find results quickly. On the other hand the online platforms can take profit of the collected data by selling them to advertising companies. The way of advertising has changed, companies buy collected data packs in order to receive information about their consumers’ interests. Thereby they are able to determine the best individual offer for their customers. However, it should be questioned whether the prize of the user’s revealed information is covered by the benefits that come with it. Additionally, there is no explicit indication what personal data is collected and how that information is being used. Obviously it could be everything you practice on your computer or in the web.

The unclear commercial collection of personal data in exchange for ‘free’ service is gradually being revealed. People concern more and more with the information they reveal and the price they are ‘paying’. An understandable reaction in times when it has been uncovered how the U.S. government were involved in a massive, illegal recording of citizen’s digital communications. It was only a matter of time before the big internet platforms receive questions about their data-capturing. Initiatives are now calling for transparency of the marketing processes in the web. Indeed, the process of collecting the user’s data can be seen as a crime. Internet users should receive “the right and ability to learn what companies know about them, how they profile them, and what data lead to what personalized offers” (Lomas, 2015).

The ability of a control what personal data will be revealed and sold to companies should be given to web users. Unless it remains an unfair and shadowy crime business of people’s privacy and certainly a threat.

References:

• Lomas, N. (2015). The Online Privacy Lie Is Unraveling. Techchrunch. Retrieved from http://techcrunch.com/2015/06/06/the-online-privacy-lie-is-unraveling/
• Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, (2015). Deutsche kümmern sich kaum um Online-Sicherheit. FAZ. Retrieved from http://www.faz.net/aktuell/wirtschaft/netzwirtschaft/sicherheit-im-internet-ist-vielen-nutzern-laut-studie-egal-13663544.html