What is Privacy in the Digital World?
By: Bismah Yousuf
Tags: Digisoc3, Smart Cities, Internet of Things, Technology, Privacy

We are all citizens of a digital world, a world which is surrounded by advanced technology and devices, so let's address the implications this world imposes on all of us.

What is a digital world?

Firstly, let's think about what a digital world is… If you ask me, in my simple words it’s a world of technology. Day after day we are all becoming involved in this world. As our day begins, we check our phones for emails, news, and weather reports etc. It’s become a big part of our lives, or we could say our lives are all based around a digital world now.

Today’s technology has made things so simple for us, from shopping online to video-calling friends across the world. This digital world is growing every single day, according to Statista there were 45.1 million daily internet users recorded in 2019 in the UK.

Though we have all these amazing benefits of this rather ‘dreamy’ world, it does come with its downsides too. Being a part of it can be complicated and impose problems on us.

How do we engage with this world?

Let’s begin with engagement, how is it that we interact with this ‘world’ and its citizens. There are numerous ways in which we engage with people and technology. We engage with companies and websites every day via websites and search engines. These websites are capable of engaging back with us, it sounds silly, but it is a very common mechanism. You could purchase a pair of leggings online and that website will save your preferences, meaning the next time you visit the website they will have targeted advertising for you, specific to your interest. You will see other leggings similar to what you purchased. Not only this, but you will also be targeted with these ads on other sites including your social media e.g Facebook or Instagram.

Although this seems like a good thing, that you are receiving pleasant online customer service, it does raise the big question of privacy. How and why is it okay to transfer my search details to other organisations. Not just transfer, but sell them? Why does Facebook have the right to know what I searched for on Amazon? As they say “nothing is ever free”, accordingly, we might be getting these services for free (i.e. browsing online) but in some way, we are paying a price for it. This price is not monetary, instead, we are giving away our personal details and preferences to organisations, which are stored by the use of cookies.

Similarly, we use different apps on our phones for services which are ‘free’ such as Google Maps, or Whatsapp. These apps are storing our location services even when we are not using them. Personally, I don’t see a justifiable explanation for why WhatsApp needs to know where I am. It raises alarming concerns because we’re always being tracked.

Home Technology

The more we think about it, the more questions come to mind. Home technology such as Alexa or Google-Home are recording our audio 24/7. Evan Dashevsky talks about this in his article, he says we are being heard at all times, even when we are not using those devices. Google is known for keeping our voice searches on its servers, in a transcript form and they remain there unless we choose to remove them. He goes on to discuss a new field of research known as “audio content analysis” which is a way of data mining by running through these recorded audios and picking up on marketing points to essentially profit from them.

So I ask you now, does the digital world really give us freedom? Is there a way out? How comfortable do you feel knowing that all your online activity is being recorded?

Surveillance Capitalism

Soshanna Zuboff an American author talks about ‘Surveillance Capitalism’. She defines it as “the unilateral claiming of private human experience as free raw material for translation into behavioural data”. Organisations pay a lot of money for our search preferences and my question is, why? Why is my privacy not valued? Well, there is one answer to this, many of these sites ask for our permission to use our data and we click ‘I accept’ without even reading the terms and conditions. So, we are partly at fault, however, to me, it still doesn’t justify this eye into our personal lives’. It gives a sense of them having too much control over our future decisions.

The Internet

We have already established how important the internet is in our lives’. The world is reliant on it to communicate, make business deals, educate, learn and much more. However, it can be a scary place too, here is a list of a few dangers of the internet:

Dating Fraud

Grooming

Addiction

Identity Theft

Viruses

Ransomware-Attacks

Being on the internet brings the risk of hackers who will find a way to get into your computers and access your files. They could also steal them for identity theft or ransom. Planned ‘ransomware-attacks’ are a very common occurrence, where the purpose of the hacker is to target a big organisation, hack into their files and lock them out. Then they will send a message asking for ransom in exchange for the files. There is no guarantee that the files will be recovered once the ransom is paid.

So, do you see how vulnerable our information really is? We could keep those files in a password protected computer, but sadly it's not in our control. That information can still be stolen by a stranger.

Vulnerability of Kids

Most children nowadays have smartphones with access to the internet. They are exposed to a lot online, this directs many threats towards them. If safety measures are not taken to control their online-activity it can lead to dreadful outcomes. Firstly, gaming addiction is very common, games online can distract kids from their daily routine and suck them into the gaming world leading to poor health, disruption in education and anti-social behaviour.

Secondly, kids being on social media can lead to Grooming, which is where somebody online impersonates to be someone else (possibly someone younger) and befriends the young person, it can lead to stalking; sexual assaults; and can drive kids into depression and trauma.

Self-Reflection

I have personally developed a lot through this online-learning course. It increased my knowledge and understanding of just how much digital technology impacts our daily life. For instance, I have been using a Google Home Mini for months, but it wasn’t until this course that I realised just how much my privacy is at risk. Ever since learning about the Internet of Things and the implications around it, I am more cautious using my home-devices.

This course allowed me to think critically and evaluate different contexts and scenarios. I had found critical thinking challenging in the past; however, this course has made me more confident towards it. This was through covering various aspects of a digital society and getting others’ input in scenarios which really broadened my thinking. Moreover, being able to read and analyse the responses of my peers gave me a real view of different perspectives.

Furthermore, I developed an interest in blogging, being able to put my thoughts forward in a blog form was a new experience to me, one that I enjoyed. This course gave me the determination to start writing blogs of my own. Blogging was something I always wanted to do but never knew where to start, however, this experience really gave me that drive. Feel free to check them out here.

The topic I found particularly interesting was Smart Cities. This is because I was completely unknown to the idea of smart cities and how they operated. What was most interesting was that despite having a ‘perfect city’ controlled by technology, the people were not happy. The Songdo city in South Korea was described as ‘lonely’.

Linda Poon speaks about life in Songdo and says everything is digitised and simple but the one thing the city lacks is a ‘vibrant community’. I would have thought having the ease of living in a digitised city would be an ideal way to live. However, evidently that is not enough, in the article its mentioned:

“There’s a ton of people living here, but you don’t really see them. The city is alive, but it’s invisible.”

This just infers how technology taking over is not all desirable. I agree with this statement because being a part of the community was a big part of my life growing up, and that is something I would want to see in the future generations too.

I have acquired a lot throughout the course, from the different themes explored. These themes will help me in the future especially the topic ‘The individual, identity and ethics’ made me question my own ethics and morality. It taught me how to stay secure online in the future, especially that example of the SNP MP whose tweets were used against her.

In my opinion, morality and law work together, even if it is about exposing someone corrupt e.g. Panama Leaks Scandal, in the eyes of the law leaking documents is wrong. So, my conclusion would be that anything illegal is somewhat wrong morally too. Therefore, my ethics would be whatever the law stands for, in all situations.

That's where I stand, what about you?