In all honesty, the article, “The Web’s New Gold Mine: Your
Secrets” written by Julia Angwin, really opened my eyes. Before reading the
article, I knew tracking online activity was nothing out of the norm. Of
course, it happens. Practically growing up with a computer and having Internet
access at a very young age, I became very familiar with technology navigation.
In fact, I already knew that our online activity was always being tracked before
I even knew it was a thing because whenever I type in my favorite websites into
the search bar, I never have to finish typing the full web address. I can just scroll
down to the first suggestion. At the time, I didn’t care because I was naïve
and I always thought, “What’s the big deal? I have nothing to hide.”
However, after reading this insightful article, I realized
that online tracking is a much bigger problem than I originally thought. The
fact that I have nothing to hide is not the problem. The real problem is the
fact that I cannot hide; I am like a sitting duck, for lack of a better
analogy. My activity online is being tracked and formulated into a specific
profile, so that it can be sold to different companies, whether these companies
are advertisers, marketers, and any type of company that is willing to pay for
my information: “The information that companies gather is anonymous, in the
sense that Internet users are identified by a number assigned to their
computer, not by a specific person’s name. Lotame, for instance, says it doesn’t
know the name of users such as Ms. Hayes-Beaty – only their behavior and
attributes, identified by code number” (Angwin).
In my opinion, I’m grateful for have read this article because
now I am educated about the subject. I came to a realization that online
tracking may seem harmless on the surface; however, it has the potential to
become a very dangerous thing and I am definitely not okay with it.
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