Privacy Issues..

            Privacy issues have become a hot topic of conversation these past years. Since companies started to track people’s web browsers in order to deliver specific ads to people’s computers, our daily moves and even personal information is no longer private.  We don’t realize that our privacy is not that private anymore, and that some of our personal information is being released to companies and other institutions without our consent. We need to start to worry about how our information is given away to everyone, because if we don’t then issues like identity theft, financial theft, and so much other things that we don’t realize might affect our lives.

            To be honest I was pretty naïve about my privacy settings on Facebook, or even in my smartphone. When we started to discuss in class how our private information is given away to companies or to other institutions and that they could do whatever they wanted with that information, I got really worried. Recently, I changed all of my privacy settings on every social media page where I have an account, because I didn’t know how bad the situation was. Like a week after I did all the changes, my mom called me to tell me about a boy who was living in the US and has a trip planned to go visit his cousin in Colombia. Since he could reach his cousin, he decided to post his flight schedule on Facebook so his cousin could know when he arrived. What he didn’t know was that a gang in Colombia was already tracking his cousin in Colombia, so when he arrived to Bogota the gang managed to kidnap him. This happened last week, and this boy is still missing. This is why I got so paranoid, and I changed all of my privacy settings to maximum security they could offer.

            Another thing that we need to think about is how our bank accounts, credit cards accounts are being stored every time we make a purchase on the Internet. This kind of information could get in the wrong hands and someone can actually steal all of your money.

            To finalize, we really need to be concerned about all of these privacy issues, because if we keep letting them use our personal information in whatever way they want to use it. I recommend everyone to be more aware of your social media accounts like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, etc. we all have to work together in order to stop this, so if we all make an effort on being aware what is really happening, then they will notice and they will stop doing it.