Do you remember the story of the website JenniCam? In 1996, Jennifer Ringley decided to record her life in photos every three minutes and upload them to the Internet. Her life changed. Her website became one of the 10 most popular sites on the Internet.
Her story traveled through the media and went from Letterman, the Wall Street Journal, to This American Life, essentially putting her private life on the open, and of course out of control.
Jennifer Ringley left the internet in 2003 and hasn't looked back since, as ZDNet reports.
In this day and age, we all want our privacy, but then we upload to Facebook, broadcast our lives in real time with Periscope and Meerkat, and are surprised to discover that our Snapchat messages don't always disappear after we've seen them.
Leaving aside whether the National Security Agency (NSA) can crack any open SSL application at any time, security holes like FREAK, and the fact that governments can collect whatever they want, let's take the now commonplace fact that at any time you upload unencrypted information to public websites for everyone to see, often forgetting that every move you make on the internet is likely to be monitored.
On many social networks, such as Facebook and Google+, a large part of the companies' business plan is based on identifying your interests so they can more effectively target their ads.
Think about it, and just look at the ads on your pages. Do they reflect your searches, what you've written, or what you've liked? Of course they do.
It's not just that they track when you're on the company's website, either. A few days ago we reported that the social network continues to track your online behavior, even when you log out of your account. The connection to your profile to attach additional information can be done with a simple cookie.
But it's not just Facebook. Google has an advertising ID that tracks Android users, and Apple uses your email address and IDFA (Identifier for Advertisers) to track you. With the rise of Big Data applications like Facebook Atlas, it's become easier than ever for companies to track your every move on the Internet.
Our personal information is used for commerce and is marketable. The internet gives us what we want quickly, and in return, advertising companies follow our every move.
You can lock your Facebook account, set your iPhone and Android to better protect your privacy, and only use websites protected by Security-Socket Layer (SSL). Nothing seems to help. This is something you should remember every time you put personal or corporate data online.
