Think for a minute about the word privacy and what it means. Maybe your mind wanders to a bedroom or the bathroom, a place where you’re pretty much on your own, blocked off from other people. Or, maybe you think about certain bits of life that are for you and you alone, and quite frankly aren’t anybody else’s business.
But what about other pieces of information, say your address, telephone number, past residences or living family members? How about your age and date of birth, your parents’ ages and their job lengths, descriptions and payrolls.
How much of that do you think the general public knows or should know? It’s a little unnerving to imagine all of that information, readily available to anyone who happens to look for it. Yet, that’s exactly where it is.
During a recent homework assignment in my Information Technology class, I was instructed to use a search engine to look for my parents and see what I found—the narcissist in me decided to go ahead and search for myself too. The amount of data available about my family and myself was unbelievable. Very real, very accurate facts about my life since birth, and my parents since before, were staring at me, just from a simple Google search with a first and last name.
Every city I’d ever lived in and phone number I’d ever had up to the current date were right there, in a neatly
organized list.
Admittedly, my initial reaction was defensive, and I wondered who had stolen this kind of information and thrown it all over the Web for anyone to see. But, the more I thought about it, the more I wondered how much of this information we had really provided ourselves. How many times have any of us just clicked agree on the iTunes terms and conditions update or entered credit card information while online shopping without really reading the fine print? How much privacy have we given up, for the convenience of access to the whole world over the Internet?
I know I’m certainly guilty of this. Even now I have both of my email accounts, online banking access, Facebook, Skype and Apple account all linked to not just my computer, but also my cell phone. With that sort of information so readily available on a device so easily lost or stolen, it’s no wonder identity theft is such an increasing problem in the United States. In 2010, 8.1 million people were victims to identity theft of some sort, the majority of which took place over some sort of digital exchange.
Now of course, I absolutely love the ease of access I have with today’s modern technology. I’m a huge fan of Facebook “check-in” and I don’t know how I’d survive without being able to buy music on iTunes from home on the computer.
Nobody wants to forgo progress; how could we with the breakneck speed that technology is moving? Every day there are more and more exciting new ways to make our lives more interconnected with the Internet, connecting with people continents away and lifetimes ago. The ability to work from home has never been easier, not to mention shop, bank and chat.
Nobody wants to see this kind of connectivity go away and no one expects it to. But, with all the fast-paced progress happening around us, it is wise to every now and then stop and think about just how much of ourselves we are really putting out there. After all, what are our future children going to find when they do a Google search on us?
Cody Barras is a freshman majoring in English with a minor in education. He can be reached for comment at [email protected]
