For most people in the world today, the use of Internet including using e-mail, sending messages and reading news online has become a daily routine. With the increase use and development of the internet, more and more data including private information are being sent and saved on the internet. Some people have the experience of that they get promotional advertisement mails and calls just because they searched a good online. As a result, data privacy and protection has become a serious problem in the society. As people are using the internet, their personal information and data are being collected by government officials and private companies which is a disaster for personal privacy. The data saved on the internet can be viewed by countless people including those who are unauthorized. A leak of data can result in serious problem. Thus, it is the information holders’ responsibility to keep the users’ data safe and unchanged.
In “A Guild For Resisting Edtech” by Sean Michael Morris and Jesse Stommel, the authors suggest that “While students who use Turnitin are discouraged from copying other work, the company itself can strip mine and sell student work for profit”(Sean&Jesse). Thus, the authors wishes that students and instructors to stop using plagiarism detection software in order to protect the students work. An example of a data leakage is the Facebook data leakage happened in early 2019. This leakages caused “More than 540 million records about Facebook users were publicly exposed on Amazon’s cloud computing service”(CBC,2019). Data leakage can cause serious problems such as loss in assets are increase the chance in succeed perform a fraud. Especially in this case, the information and data leaked form Facebook contains millions of personal information including the user’s real name, birthdate and the information of relatives. These information can be used to access the use’s bank account and insurance information which are key assets for the user. More over, “A breach at a corporation can put proprietary data in the hands of a competitor. A breach at a school could put students’ PII in the hands of criminals who could commit identity theft. A breach at a hospital or doctor’s office can put PHI in the hands of those who might misuse it”(Symantec,2019). The original purpose for social media companies like Facebook and Google to collect user’s personal data is to analyze each users preference and behavior to provider them with better personal service. These companies are responsible for protecting the data saved on their server. The data these companies collected are used to predict user behavior makes users privacy to be further exposed. Some users do not even know what they are interested in before they are recommanded to see. Higher level firewall only increase the chance of not being hacked, no security system is 100% safe in the world. There is still a chance for hackers to gain unauthorized access to the information they want. For this reason, an anti-internet movement has risen. The movement supporters suggests that the internet is bring everyone naked to the whole world and personal privacy is disappearing with the technology development of the internet. Indeed, the internet is bring a better and comfortable life to everyone in the world, and the economy of the world in benefiting from the use of internet. For this reason, the development of the internet is unstoppable. On the other hand, when people are enjoying the conveniency brought by the internet, they are exposed to potential threats of personal data leakage.
To protect personal data from being hacked and used improperly, it needs the effort from both the government and the public. The largest personal data and information holders in the world are the government officials. They have the information of everyone in the world and the information they have are detailed as some citizens themselves do not even recognize. Governments gather data to better protect their citizens by analyzing the data they collected and prevent crimes. However, if the data they collected is used illegally, countless people’s information would be put in danger. For this reason, government officials have the most secure protection system in the world and it takes large resources to take down the government server which is nearly impossible. For this reason, hacker aim at private companies to steal user data. Compare to the firewall that government uses, the security system that private companies use is much weaker and vulnerable, especially small IT companies. Small internet companies usually hire software developer to help them to build a strong fire wall against hacker. With the help from a third party software provider, the difficulty for hackers to conquer the fire wall increased greatly. However, some companies use the weakness of users who do not read the terms and conditions of using the sites carefully, these companies sell user information to a third party in order to gain profit. To deal with this situation, government put laws against this behavior. In China, a law called consumer protection law was brought out in 2014 to make sure that consumer must know who their personal information are viewed and where they are used before their data are collected. The law further increase the protection for users privacy and information safety. Users are also responsible for protecting their own data. In Unit 3 of this course, the article suggests several ways for students to protect their online privacy. For example, students can use nick names rather than their real name to make it harder to track a specific person. In addition, students can decide whether to make their own work public or be viewed by only the instructor. These methods can help in protecting students privacy and make students to decide to have a more comfortable way when studying the course.
In conclusion, with the increasing use of the internet, more personal information and data including user behavior are being collected. Personal information and data that can critically damage one’s assets and reputation is exposed to potential threats. A data leakage from online server especially severs that hold a huge amount of data can influence millions of people and put their personal information vulnerable to be used improperly. Internet users should be aware of keeping their data safe and secure. In addition, official government laws and supervise from the public can significantly decrease the chance for data and information to be hacked.
The learning pod in this course created a community for students in the same course to help those who encounter problem when studying the course. When taking an online course, it is hard for students to get an impression of their classmates, the learning pod helps student to get along well with each other. What’s more, students can get more ideas of the articles in the course by reading others blog and paper. In a word, the learning pod is friendly and useful in the course, and it fit the theme creating an online community in a chapter of the course.
Reference list
A GUILD FOR RESISTING EDTECH : THE CASE AGAINST TURNITIN, SEAN MICHAEL MORRIS AND JESSE STOMMEL, Pressbook. https://criticaldigitalpedagogy.pressbooks.com/chapter/a-guide-for-resisting-edtech-the-case-against-turnitin/
Hundreds of millions of Facebook user records were exposed on Amazon cloud server, CBC NEWS, April 4th 2019. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/millions-facebook-user-records-exposed-amazon-cloud-server/
What is data privacy and why is it important, Symantec, 2019. https://www.lifelock.com/learn-identity-theft-resources-what-is-data-privacy-and-why-is-it-important.html
Anti-Internet movement is needed, says expert. DW. https://www.dw.com/en/anti-internet-movement-is-needed-says-expert/a-5738801