On April 10, 2018, Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified before Congress regarding the unauthorized sharing of 87 million Facebook users’ personal data, vacuumed up by data research company Cambridge Analytica. There were pointed questions regarding Facebook’s lack of transparency about the incident, a bit of dancing by Zuckerberg, and a lot of apologizing. All in all, it was a boring but fairly honest back and forth about the responsibilities and duties of large corporations when it comes to personal data.
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But at the end, we had what? An outwardly contrite Zuckerberg, some political smugness, and just maybe the groundwork for some upcoming privacy laws. After the curtains went down I was still left wondering just how worried consumers are, really, about internet privacy. As far as I know there has been no reduction in how many people use PayPal to buy goods from online stores. We have heard no news of a drastic drop in subscriptions to Amazon Prime, Netflix, Hulu, iTunes, or other online streaming services. Even Zuckerberg said Facebook had seen no impact following what was probably the most egregious infraction of user trust in a social media site we have seen in quite a while.
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Comments
We Don’t Care About Data Privacy
Whilst I can't speak for others, I can for myself and I do take my privacy seriously and go to lengths to limit the information collected and shared. There is less I can do about credit cards due to the ways they managed to get the laws written (can you say "special interests", I knew you could) but I use 1 card for me and a totally different one for work and never the twain shall meet except in the hands of the credit bureaus, all of which have freezes on my accounts. I don't do banking, financial related, medical related, retirement related or other serious privacy impacting activities on my phone (would be a bit tough on a non-smart phone; which I use as a phone — imagine that :-) ) or on Wi-Fi. My computers at home connect via cable and I use both a hardware and two (2) software firewalls.
FB is locked down and I don't post status comments, limit remarks to "happy birthday", "happy anniversary" and " "congrats". And no pictures but a landscape from me and I routinely clear out what they think I like. I'd dearly love a GDPR in the US, but am not such a fool to expect that to happen as it is no in the interest of big business and their lobbyist. So, I will be content with locking things down as tight as I can: including two (3) different credit watch services and tracking/monitoring/behavioral analysis blocking extensions in my browsers and good old common sense, even if that is far from common nowadays. As is usually the case, widely cast nets always catch more than intended; I fall into the bycatch category. But that makes a point as well: broadly counched statements are generally wrong at one level or another.
Dependance
Unfortunately, society evolved in such a way that you HAVE TO use some of those "spyware softwares". I couldn't communicate with ANYONE I know if I didn't use WhatsApp, for example
Anyway theres a bunch of NCSAM campaigns going around regarding privacy and security. Heres one check it out https://www.purevpn.com/events/ncsam
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