Privacy is an important thing for many people and it relates to important
human principles such as human dignity, human uniqueness and the importance of solitude. Everyone expects a certain level of privacy in their daily lives and especially when it comes to companies. The relation of companies and privacy evokes thought about the ethical issues that arise between the two. Companies with websites, which, in this day and age is every company, have the ability to download 'cookies' onto the device in which you accessed the website. A cookie is something checks whether you have been to the site before and can keep track of when you return and then use this information to tailor the different ads on the screen in a way that would appeal to the user more. This has both good and bad factors with it because they are great for remembering your shopping carts and save web preferences but to do this they have to store information about you which can be used for tracking which many consumers do not want.
Facebook, the most popular social networking site at nearly
2.2 billion users had 87 million of its users personally identifiable information
collected and was used in an attempt to influence voter opinion in the 2016 United States presidential election for the politicians in which hired them. This raised huge ethical questions on the security of all the data that consumers put into all of their internet logins and profiles.
What do you think of this topic ? Do you trust the companies with your personal information ? Does this make you want to delete everything online ? Let me know down below :)
Hi Kaan,
ReplyDeleteThe only cookies I like are the ones that I can eat ;)
What happens behind the scenes of the deep, dark Internet world are really starting to make me think twice about what SE I use or what content/information I share on my social media accounts. Although I don’t think I’m at the point where I would consider deleting them, I certainly will take another look through the settings of the se platforms.
The Facebook data sharing scandal you mention in your post highlights the fact that almost no one can be trusted with our data, especially the big companies. With huge developments happening with big data it seems our personal information is more valuable than ever.
Look forward to next week’s post.
Catherine ☺
Yep i agree and companies are getting more and more watched over these kind of "bad" uses of our data. Hopefully in the future we can browse the internet with not too many privacy concerns
DeleteHey thanks for the comment,
ReplyDeleteIn the context of cookies i also dont think they pose too much of a problem as they are only there for personalised and tailored results but there is more of an issue with other companies accessing this data and using it for their own use.