Is safety possible anymore?
I have always felt that I was born at a very strange time in human history. Then again, I doubt that anyone has felt that their time-period is necessarily “normal” considering how wild much of history is, but the past nineteen years (or rather, my life) have seen immense changes. Nowhere is this more evident than in the online world. Specifically, internet safety is changing radically all the time and internet users have yet to change with it.
The article “Understanding and Maintaining Your Privacy When Writing with Digital Technologies” by Lindsey Kim points out how we live in a time of constant rapid evolution in the digital world. The internet is always changing both technologically and socially, with our entire society essentially always morphing and contorting around it. This is particularly true for people my age, as we spend more time on the internet than any other group. Despite this, we are largely no wiser about being safe on the internet than previous generations. Internet safety is strangely enough still something that most people are ignorant about.
How unsafe are we?
Kim wrote that major companies collect people’s data from their transactions so that they can predict what others will do. This allows these companies to properly target their advertisements. This is especially unethical considering it is not made widely known to users. This is a problem that far too many people are unaware of. Sadly, it is also a problem that far too many people simply do not care about. If these companies are able to access information for the sake of advertising to us, then what is to stop them from using the same strategies for more nefarious purposes.
Is there any hope?
Internet safety is nowadays what drug safety or sex safety was in schools in decades past. It may have seemed unnecessary at some point, but it is clear that it is now required. The internet can be an avenue for helping people out greatly, but it can also put people at risk for being abused. It is absolutely crucial that we educate people on internet safety before it is too late.
Kim’s article is reachable here https://wac.colostate.edu/docs/books/writingspaces4/kim.pdf
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