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What About Your Privacy, Bloggers??????
Apparently, when blogging, one gives out all sorts of information about oneself. In different formats: text, pictures (hm, thats about all). Telling the world about one’s private thoughts, wishes, perceptions of the world and people, fears, happy moments, sad moments. Hmmmmmm, what happened to our privacy, bloggers?
In the last few days, an interesting question was posed to me by different persons. Some did it randomly; some knew privacy could be a serious issue for me. So the question was: What about your privacy, Bojana? People can easily interconnect the data you give out about yourself and other electronic data, gathered about you, and then know all about who you are, what you do, where you are, how you feel. And those people might want to take advantage of those data. One of them added: You are so much worried about your privacy and then you go and write a blog under your real name.
True. True. I can be as paranoid about privacy as to run antispy software every day after surfing the net just to make sure to get rid of any tracking software, deleting all cookies after surfing the net, being constantly worried about the possibility of my computer being hijacked, etc etc. I hate it when I know my mobile phone provider collects data about who I call, when I call, where I was yesterday at 10pm, who sent me that text message at 11am, what was said in it. I hate it when I know my credit card is a tracking device - my bank knows exactly where am doing the payment, when, what I buy, in which country, so they can make a nice profile of consumer called Bojana. I hate it when my ISP provider tracks all my online activities which sites did I visit yesterday, which sites I go back to, how much time do I spend there. I certainly dont like knowing that all the emails I write are subject to be read by people who are not the intended receivers. The interception of emails is really an automatic and routine procedure (I used to use PGP key, but then, not many of my friends use them and I cant force them to start using them). A while ago, there was an online database of all bank account holders (I found myself in it) with quite some data, published on the net by Slovenian Bank. By mistake:)) And I could go on and on and on. The capacity of surveillance possibilities is surly enhanced in Information Age, mostly due to ability of interconnection of gathered data about specific person. And by doing so, and processing that information, I as an individual should be quite scared about the fact, that almost every move I make, it is electronically registered and therefore can be used also for quite threatening purposes.
It may feel like we are performing an intimate act when we use our mobile phones and computers to transmit our private and not so private thoughts, business details, and also money! But cleaver eavesdroppers, and sometimes even not so cleaver, can hear it all. We think we are whispering, but actually we are broadcasting!
I think every person should be entitled to a workshop on How To Retain Your Privacy Nowadays! There are things we could do for more protection but we are either too lazy or too busy to learn how. We should learn more how to protect our communication and personal data against intrusion, against stealing and interconnecting the data. We should learn some cryptography in order to keep our electronic privacy.
So, my blog is like a drop into the sea (as we say it in Slovenian). Plus my blog contains no information that I wouldnt like people to find out about. Whereas there is a lot of data tracked about me, which I don’t want to be tracked. Of course I have to do a little pre-selection of what to publish and what not to. For example, today a great thing has happened to me. I was so happy I wanted to share it with the entire world. But I better not publish it (for those curious about it, drop me an email, I will tell u all about it:))))))). So, I need to do some selection but what I post and people out there read, is what I want them to read. And all the pictures I show, I want them to be seen.
The difference is quite simple: I do the selection. I have a control over the amount of information revealed.
By Nana | January 17, 2005 | Topics: Blogging |
November 3rd, 2006 at 8:36 am
[...] My typical answer: ‘All I write can be shared. Or else I don’t write about it. I am happy that blog gives me the opportunity to share’. I already wrote once about this. [...]