The Internet has become a key part of our world, especially in today’s society, I could not imagine what the world would be like without the internet. The internet saves a huge amount of data that includes lots of personal information. Citizens’ privacy information such as address and bank account information are dangerous when getting into the hand of the wrong people. Thus, the protection of information and data is extremely important.
One example of a data leakage I found on the internet is the user information breach of Facebook. “In September 2018, facebook announced that an attack on its computer network exposed the personal data of over 50 million users. According to Facebook, hackers were able to gain access to the system by exploiting a vulnerability in the code used for the ‘View as’ feature.”(GERALDINE,2018)
Large social media companies like Facebook and Google has the information of millions of users. Once the company’s system is hacked, these personal information would be open, some important information would even be erased or changed which could result in huge loss. For myself, the best thing to use Google Chrome which is a internet explore is that it can save all your account information of all the websites you logged in. Once you agree to save your account information on Google, you do not have to remember all the passwords which is a convenient design. However, the convenience of this design makes it easier for hackers to steal our account information. Instead of getting the account information they need from each website, now all they need to do is to hack into Google and take all the account information. The security of our data depends solely on the system safety of Google.
Another danger users face when using the internet is that some website owners sells users information to a third party company without the authorization of the users. For most websites, they require users to agree with their term of use prior to registration. These terms are suppose to protect both the website owners and the users. However, nowadays people agree with the terms without taking a look at any of the terms which gives some website a chance to leak out user data for profit legally.
In general, data leakage can result in serious consequences, the users should be aware of protecting their data instead of trusting the server provider solely.
Photo by Sai Kiran Anagani on Unsplash
5 examples of security breaches in 2018, November1 12th 2018, · GERALDINE STRAWBRIDGE
https://www.metacompliance.com/blog/5-examples-of-security-breaches-in-2018/