Video Reflection

    Juan Enriquez discussed the dangers of your permanent online trace. He related it to a common tattoo. Tattoos tell stories, whether they are beautiful, intriguing or obvious mistakes. Similarly our online presence tells the world our story whether it is good or not. Every social media and online service is like an online tattoo. Photos posted are collected by many databases and are sold to companies that could find use for them. A facial recognition database with 18 billion faces was just sold to Facebook.

    But how does this affect you? Haven’t you been responsible online? The truth is that your online presence can definitely be affected by you but you are not in control. Others have posted pictures of you, companies have sold your private information and the next thing you know when you search your name you see photos of you and a spy website that will sell your address, phone number and criminal record to anyone with $4.99.

    A very scary part to all of this is that the government is not trying to control this. The government is more than happy that there are facial recognition and online fingerprints everywhere because it makes their job way easier. Terms and agreements make it impossible to get mad when a company sells your data.

    California recently passed a bill that in one easy step users should be able to hit a button and stop their information from being transferred to other online companies and users. 

    If people want to protect themselves there are a few options. First is maintaining your online reputation. The drunk picture on instagram will come back to you when it comes time for a job interview. The second is a VPN, or Virtual Private Network. Many people and companies try to advertise based on location, and VPNs make your searching and online presence untrackable. The third thing is to be careful with giving information and advocate for privacy laws. Handing out phone numbers, addresses and any other personal information should be done with extreme discretion or not at all. Sure amazon delivery needs your address but facebook does not.