This blog is supposed to be focused on finding a colleague in the class and consolidating all the personal data that is on the internet into a single blog post. After two classes focused on how easy it is to find personal information on others, I figured I would take a different approach. I want to write a short essay on how companies, and individuals, can access your personal data, why they would want to, and the future implications of having a borderline privacy free internet.

The question of how is easily anwsered, and it often involves the unread conditions in the small print. I will use Facebook as an example, however most social media apps have similar terms and conditions. Facebook vehemently denies selling user data, and they are correct when they say that. What they do is significantly more sinister in an attempt to skirt those regulations. They create a consumer profile for you, which is a faceless avatar that represents you for the sake of targetting you with suggestions. This avatar is constructed by consolidating these factors together:

Personal data

This category is quite broad. It consists of any personal information you submit to the app, such as age, gender, sex, where you live, social security number, pictures of yourself, IP address of the devices you use, and cookies saved on your browser.

Engagement data

Engagement is measured by your activity on the site, what you spend the most time looking or interacting with, messanger activity (text or other methods), and how the person reacts to advertisements.

Behavioral data

If things were not sketchy before, this is where things cross the line. People data mining your available information will be able to quantify your spending habits (repeat purchases, where you shop), which products you prefer based on that information, and most frightening of all, qualitative data. Qualitative web data is how you use you mouse (or eyes/fingers on a smart phone), which means your entire experience on these free to use social media apps are tracked.

By tracking your behavior on the internet, collecting your personal information, and being able to establish what device you are wusing and where you are using it, data miners are able to predict future behaviors.

Why does this matter?

Well, outside of having no privacy while using the internet that data can be used against you. It has become common place for HR departments to use that data to determine if you should or should not be hired. Hiring/recruitment departments seek third party data collectors for this available information to screen out potential new hires. Although it is common, here is a brief article focusing on the implications of hiring departments using this information:

https://www.businessnewsdaily.com/2377-social-media-hiring.html

Another important aspect of having all of your information on the internet is that companies track your info and online habits in order to predict your future behaviors. This egregious abomination of an algorithim uses your own information against you by targetting you with ads specifically designed to put pressure on you when you are vulnerable. This article goes over how apps predict your future behaviors and then sell that information to companies that cater to the things you need/want:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/nathanpettijohn/2019/09/03/of-course-your-phone-is-listening-to-you/?sh=594741316a3f

Society is addicted to free to use apps that track our information, and we have accepted that we pay for those free services with our privacy. We have become the prodcut sold to advertising agencies, and have opened ourselve up to social media audits before we get hired. There is no solution, and no that the genie is out of the bottle there is no going back to a private internet existence. I will let the Woz send this blog off: