Sunday, December 13, 2015

Privacy or Convenience?

Are we trading privacy for convenience? Privacy has never been major concern for this upcoming generation. We give up many details of our lives through social media. Every moment of our lives is published on Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat.
So when it comes to sacrificing privacy to be able to use bigger and better technology, it is an easy and quick choice. Before signing up for all of these social media sites, we check the box that signs our lives away as far as we know. We have been conditioned to check these boxes on a regular basis with no idea or care of what we are agreeing to. This generation ignores the fact that when we post pictures, videos, and statements on these social media sites, we no longer own them.
We have resigned ourselves to assuming that giving up this information is inevitable, because we are so dependent on these websites. Even when it comes to incredibly sensitive information, we have been trained to give it all out on websites. When it came to applying and getting aid for college, we not only needed to give payment information, but also our social security and other personal identification information. Even if you did not feel comfortable sending in this information over the internet, you had to.
People claim that they do not want to give up their information, but feel that it is too late according to “The Tradeoff Fallacy”. At this point in time people do not even think that they have a choice in the matter, even if its an optional service.
Data is constantly being collected about us. The amount of information that Google collects after hundreds of searches is immense. They can make an entire profile of you as a customer, and those information and analytics are sold to marketers.
Our email addresses are becoming more and more valuable. For example, there is an app called Square Cash that allows users to transfer money from their debit account to another debit account and vice versa. I had heard of a couple other forms of this before I felt the need to sign up for one of these apps. I was very hesitant to give my debit card number to a seemly sketchy app, so I looked into the business.
                My main concern was how this app actually made money. In this specific case, not only did the app not charge for the service, but when someone joined the app after being invited by another person, both the inviter and invitee got a free 5 dollars. This baffled me. If they were not charging me and they are giving me money, what exactly am I missing? After some light digging came the solution: emails. Square Cash sells you email address and other information that you input.
                After this discover, I then chose to give up my privacy and sign up. When it came down to it the tradeoff between the convenience and the loss of privacy was worth it. I could handle some spam if I got an efficient way to not have to take cash out of the bank. Square Cash has become a commonly used tool in my daily life. It is necessary for going out to dinner, buying club shirts, and splitting taxis.
                In all, the world today values convenience over keeping their information private. It is what we have been trained to do and has become a necessity in our current state of mind. With this state of ignorance, it seems as though there will be no end, but the inevitable demise of privacy as we know it.


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