Tag Archives: Privacy

Screaming Eagles-Discussion Questions for Citron Reading/Audio

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  1. How does one begin to stop these things from happening? Cyber bullies can have access to a lot of information about the person that they are targeting, or they can dig it up. In doing so, the information that they find can be used against the victim to ruin their careers or even their whole lives. How can these actions be deterred, or stopped altogether?
  2. How can someone even begin to forgive their cyber attacker? Could you imagine yourself being able to forgive someone who cyber bullied you, as was exemplified in the audio clip?
  3. How do you see cyber harassment happening in the future? Will we have developed our laws more so that cyber crimes are more easily punishable, or will this remain a problem for years to come?
  4. Is it the role of the government to raise the level of security or monitoring online activity to prevent some of these cyber attacks? Or should the problem be dealt with at a more local level? Does limiting cyber bullying affect free speech?
  5. In your opinion, what type of person is a “troll”? What kind of things could have happened in their lifetime that makes them want to harass people online? Can there be sympathy for trolls?
  6. What do you think the best way to handle a troll is? Should people ignore trolls, or should they try to defend themselves?

Is Google Evil?

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The list of issues with Google is nearly endless but interestingly, their slogan is, “Don’t be evil.” When reviewing all of these things that cause me to become skeptical about this company, I start to wonder if their motto is merely ironic. The aspects of Google that we have yet to uncover are those most concerning. In my opinion, there are many questions that the public will never get an answer to. The most crucial of these is privacy.

Almost everyone I know, including myself, uses Google for their daily inquiries above Bing, Yahoo!, and any other search engine combined. The convenience and speed of looking up anything and everything we may need to know has become priceless. Does this mean that we’re willing to utilize Google at any cost? Before reading about “Google controversies,” I never took into consideration how much information I was feeding Google. Typing a keyword into the search bar on my laptop really does not take too much thought. Unfortunately, this lack of thought could lead to many problems down the road.

Google saves all of my searches so that my search results in the future are better customized. Another feature that is meant to make my life more convenient is autofill. My name, address, phone number, etc. are stored so that I can generate them rather than redundantly filling in this criteria myself. These features are often viewed as beneficial because of how much easier they make our lives. The key question concerning all of this is the storage of our person preferences and information.

Google’s privacy policy states that they use information they collect “to offer [us] tailored content – like giving [us] more relevant search results and ads.” The company shares this information with all of Google’s “affiliates,” although there is no list provided to clarify exactly which entities this includes. (We could safely assume that AdSense is one of them though.) Our information is given to these third parties for processing reasons. There are also several other times that their policy says Google may share information. Most of this has to do with governmental and legal reasons. While the rationale may seem sound and the policy transparent enough, there is still some skepticism to be had due to accountability.

If we want to use Google, we have no other choice but to trust their policies and trust the company with our information. Even if everything in the privacy policy looks to our liking, there is the question of whether or not these are the exchanges of information that are actually occurring. Unfortunately, there is no oversight board that is looking out for the best interests of the consumer. Google has essentially expanded into a monopoly that has almost no accountability regarding their practices.

So, is Google evil?

This question brings up the main issue once again: there is so much that we don’t know. I do not think we can really distinguish whether or not Google is evil without the full picture. Of course, one could try to make this determination based on the information that is provided to us but the conclusion may be largely inaccurate. We may never be able to answer whether or not Google is evil because we may never know the company’s true practices.

 

Opt-out? When did I ever opt-in?

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When you think of Google, what do you think of? Convenience? Sure. Results? Absolutely. If we’re being honest, Google is there for you more often than even the closest of friends. When you need something, where do you turn first? If you’re anything like me, just “Google it!” Move over, Nike. People aren’t into doing anymore, they’re into googling. 

It’s true, the majority of us have been “googlized.” It’s a noun, it’s a verb, it’s integrated in every part of our lives. Long gone are the days of a simple search engine. Now there’s search and scholar and gmail and maps and doodle and all of these incredible applications brought to you by, none other than, Google. I like to think of Google and all of its popular features similar to Apple and it’s products — they all work and run together with a similar interface, they sync with each other via iCloud, and the possibilities for what you can do with these products are seemingly ENDLESS. What could be the harm in that?

The biggest thing that struck me from the readings this week was the issue of privacy and how little of it we have. It seems that the more Google does for us in everyday life, the less control we have over what stays private. It’s a trade-off; Yes, you want Google to sync your information and know your location and help you with whatever task you may come across, but in exchange for its services it needs and collects specific information on you that you can’t necessarily take back.

One example: Say you’re writing a research paper on sloths. You find all of these amazing articles and as you’re doing your research, you realize you forgot to cite something. How are you going to find that article again?! You can’t remember what you searched for to get that particular result and you need it NOW. Well have no fear, Google knows what you’ve searched for and more often that not it will bring you back to that, or related, search results because of the cookies in your browser.

But did you give Google permission to keep track of your online activity? With Google’s technology, are you ever even offline? Well Google user, you’d know this if you ever read the constantly-changing privacy policy and terms of use. People tend to skip over the daunting legal contracts presented to them when they sign up for particular services or use certain softwares. The default settings for such sites usually allow for maximum access to information. In order to change these settings and have any say in what Google has access to, users must “opt-out” of certain setting configurations.

So I guess the biggest question I have is, when did we ever opt-in?

 

Take it from our friends of South Park, ALWAYS read before agreeing to anything:

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sglZGSwK6ow[/youtube]

 

Privacy

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In the readings given on Google this week, there were several new terms in which I have never heard before and also the concepts of these new terms have intrigued me. Below is a term that caught my attention and I have done my best to relay what it means by way of paraphrasing the author’s explanation.

‘Privacy‘ – A broad term regarding several interpretations with not much customization.

  •      “representing a desire to withhold information about personal conduct” (pg 93).
  •      “the terms of control over information, not the nature of the information [shared]” (pg 93).

I also have ironically taken into account Googling the definition:

 

Capture

“the state or condition of being free from being observed or disturbed by other people”

or

“the state of being free from public attention”

The author states that we “demand some sort of control over our reputations” and that “privacy refers to the terms of control over information, not the nature of information we share.” I think these are important statements to consider when the issue of privacy comes into play with social media and search engines, namely Google. Especially with such social media like Facebook exposing our desires from the Beacon program and Google taking into account accessing things we have looked up and using that information trying to read our minds for the future. The latter quote puts into perspective the argument I think most users that take issue with things like the Beacon program are trying to make. When combated with the idea that they are already willingly exposing themselves via the social media, it is important to highlight that all users want is control over what they share.

Would you agree that this is most important issue around privacy? That it isn’t necessarily the content being shared but the fact that you are not the one sharing the content? Why do people care so much that this type of information is getting taken from them, isn’t it kind of convenient that they are just trying to anticipate what we want? Almost like a good server anticipating the needs of the guest to please them. We like those scenarios, when people seem to know what we want. So what is our issue with technology doing so?