In the reading, Understanding and Maintaining Your Privacy When Writing with Digital Technologies, Lindsey refrains from the U.S being the land of the private. What is it to have privacy, and do we truly have it? The moment we go online, we invite others into our space, exchanging energy and information. John Cheney states that a “simple web search will show the location of your phone, the time, date, and IP address.” That creates metadata, data that’s so invisible that you don’t notice it, yet contributes to it unconsciously.
Where do we see it?
I see it a lot now, when I download Netflix, and it immediately asks me to track my usage, to see what I like. That’s how algorithms work. My Instagram feed and TikTok for you page reflect everything that I interact with, keeping me hooked on the platform. This makes us look at the digital world as a relationship with us. We log on to media to share perspectives, yet if it’s filtered to only “what we like,” it allows our biases to deepen.
Apps don’t reflect us; they shape us. Tinder, for example, creates a profile for “your type” based on swipes and conversations. Humans naturally categorize things, yet now we build reinforcements to those categories and feed them back to us. Even when we try to guard our privacy, old habits pull us back into comfort. It’s inevitable to go against a system that we designed. At the end, it’s like we can try to maintain our privacy online by having knowledge and having control of our information, but then we forget and roll back into what we are used to.
Over the summer, my email address got hacked; apparently, my password was in a data leak. Who did it? No idea, but once I learned about having password authenticators, it allowed me to browse safely. It’s like you’re browsing with control instead of just free flowing. I almost had a heart attack when my email got hacked because from my email, the person changed my password to my Netflix, Hulu, and Disney accounts. In a funny way, don’t give the keys to your house to a stranger you don’t know.
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