If anyone's taken a gander at the book titled 1984 by George Orwell, then we all know too well the fear of Big Brother. He is always watching, and his crew of Thought Police keep the cities under constant observation by use of "telescreens," which notice your every move and report any actions of rebellion directly to the top honchos. It never dawned on me that this very thing could ever happen outside of a fictional nightmare. However, ironically enough, social networking and phones with app features are now similarly tracking our lives in ways that we don't think of.
You know those fantastic little things the Internet calls cookies? They are just the beginning of our issues. These electronic devices are created to store and keep track of the history of every website that you have ever visited and make it easier to access websites by saving your passwords for future reference. However, all though it seems like a great catch, these cookies are also being used to access a good majority of your information that has been shared with these websites. And although it might not seem like it, websites are using these bits of information to form an online version of ourselves. They take your google searches, purchases, and interests and use them to dictate which advertisements you will see on your feed, what pops up on the news websites, and (if extreme enough) can alter larger things such as your credit card limit.
Webcams and microphones can also be easily accessed on both your computer and phone to gain information about your location for another source of advertising purposes. According to Mike Elgan in his article titled Snooping: It's not a crime, it's a feature, by listening in on your phone, capturing "patterns," then sending that data back to servers, marketers can determine things such as your gender, your approximate age, what time you go to bed and wake up, what you watch on TV and listen to on the radio, how much time you spend alone or with others, whether you live in a big city or small town, and what form of transportation you use to get to work.
Another source of worry is that the government can access emails, messages, phone calls, etc., all using phone companies and their voluntary cooperation. The purpose of this access was a result of the attacks on September 11, but many believe that these interventions are being taken much too drastically. So the question remains - are they? How do we know where to draw the line on what is acceptable and what is too much? Some people believe that using our information for advertisements is completely harmless because their data is being kept private. Others are aware of the repercussions that can occur if we aren't careful with the data we share online.
In a world full of technology, all eyes are on us. Big Brother is closer to a reality than ever before. How long can we continue letting technology dictate our lives before it begins to alter our ability to maintain even a minuscule fraction of privacy?
