What is Online Privacy?
Online privacy is how well personal information is protected when accessing the internet. It is in best practice to maintain a sufficient level of privacy when connecting to as public and accessible of a space as the internet.
So, how does one maintain it?
Do you you remain anonymous online– not share sensitive information like passwords– or just go on an incognito tab? Or do something little bit more involved. Like not only maintaining anonymity and keeping sensitive information hidden but employing VPNs, encryption/anti-tracking services and more. These examples of more involved methods are a little more considerate of what Lindsey C. Kim refers to as “information privacy”.
Kim, in her article Understanding and Maintaining Your Privacy When Writing with Digital Technologies, describes information privacy as consisting of three core concepts “data, agency, and flow”. For this article, I will be focusing mostly on data and agency.
Data And Agency
Data, in this context, is information produced by any action performed online. Any activity performed digitally causes metadata to be composed. Metadata is more detailed information about a piece of digital data (such as image files, documents, etc.). Metadata while not readily available is still accessible to users. The threat to privacy comes when digital data that contains metadata with personal information (like location for example) is available online.
Agency, in regard to online privacy, describes “[…] the ability to affect the collection and use of your personal information, both that which is intentionally and unintentionally produced” (Kim 5). Engaging in online activities, comes at the cost of users submitting some of that personal information. The level of personal agency a user has comes into question when that information is submitted without their consent and beyond their control. Flow is the understanding of how personal information is distributed online, which aids user agency.
True online privacy cannot be achieved without a user having full agency over the distribution of their data.
How to improve Privacy and Agency
Martha Fay Burtis, in her article Messy and Chaotic Learning, discusses how the implementations of LMSs by educational institutions had effected how students learned and how teachers instructed. She acknowledges that these LMS corporations collect student and teacher data. In exchange, users get a “standardized” and more “streamlined” online experience. While her article mainly focuses on how relying on corporation produced online systems effects education, the same can be said about the relationship between your typical online users and their relationship with platforms like Google.
So, with this more broadened definition I ask again: How does one maintain online privacy? Burtis suggest creating your own domain–your own site to host your content.
How better to ensure you own agency online than being the primary recipient of your own personal information? Instead of having to fold to a corporations terms of service, you go fully by your own terms. Sure, developing your own site will come with some challenges and may result in something less streamlined, but it’ll result in something that’s more you.
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