“If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself.”
-George Orwell, 1984
So…What’s the Deal With Passwords?
OKAY! So, in this post we’re going to be talking mostly about privacy –like, internt privacy, not your annoying little broter who just won’t stay out of your room– and how, basically, nothing on the internet really ever goes away.
The first question I have been tasked with answering is: As a Communications Major, how do I think these issues will affect my career?
To answer this question personally, as a Communications Major with concentrations in Digital Cinema and Television, I personally, am not sure how many of these issues will affect my career. In a sense of privacy and information protection, the only thing I would particularly be worried about would be protecting any an all content related to a project that I’m working on. This can be avoided by using strong passwords, and following these steps to ensure my content is safe from hackers.
Are We Putting Too Much Online?
So, the big issue with a lot of this privacy stuff, is are we putting too much out there? Both for other people, and of course, data sharing with companies and the government.
While, I do think it’s important to not share a lot of personal information publicly online, it’s mostly for safety reasons. There are a lot of scammers and other dangerous people out there who will want to steal and use your information. So, no bank account or social security numbers, guys.
However, the internet is not at all what it was 20 years ago. Back then, it was still kind of new and scary, so people had a lot more reservations about what they put online. My generation has grown up online. So, we are a lot more open and have close to zero reservations when it comes to posting on social media.
Generation Z has essentially accepted that whatever information we may have had that was private, the government likely already has. We make jokes about having our own personal FBI agent that watches us through our lap top and phone cameras. We live in such a connected world, I can speak to my Google Home and play my music, tell it what to play on my TV, and it can even turn off my lights for me. The internet is second nature to us at this point.
So, do I think privacy is important? Yes. But, I’m not sure it really matters anymore, since I can just be talking about wanting new jeans to my mom and have Levi ads show up on my phone within the same day. Are we also putting too much on the internet, though? Yeah, probaby.
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