Technology Orientated
So (some of you may already know) took the liberty to take myself away from a computer for a few days, a few personal reasons being the backing of that, but I won’t go into detail. Now other than a quick email check and reply on Sunday night, and a Google Search on behalf of someone else Monday. I haven’t used a PC until now, Wednesday.
That’s a good four days and I must say, it was quite a lovely break, although I watched quite a lot of TV, I must say it felt quite a lot more… Productive, because usually I would sit in my computer chair, perhaps with social networks open waiting for something to happen – but instead, I did some housework, productive in itself, and watched some TV, which actually felt even more productive that what it usually would. Why? Because I didn’t have a laptop sat next to me, so I was actually watching the television programme(s), taking the content in. Learning from the TV without the distractions of a computer.
Then this morning, I was watching television once more and they were debating about high street’s closing, due to internet shopping. That’s when I realised, we’re too driven by technology, well, at least PC’s. I feel positive to say that it’s more than likely almost every household has at least one PC. That’s quite a lot compared to ten years ago. It’s upsetting really, knowing how much we used them, heck, most of you are probably on a PC right now, reading this. Now personally, I think we use them too much, they just seem part of life now, perhaps they are.
However, going further into technology, although we seem to accept it, what we don’t realise is the scary side to it. You see these crime drama programmes tracking people from where they use a PC, I’m quite sure that’s possible. Is that a privacy alert? Or a safety feature? I’m not too sure personally. Then we have our phones, with built in satellite navigation, it can almost precisely detect your location. Is that another privacy awareness there? Or just a “cool feature”. I don’t really know again, I guess it depends who has access to what really.
I guess to cut things short, although I am/was a tech fanatic, I think the “behind” parts of technology are quite scary when you look at it! What do you think?
Your Privacy Doesn’t Matter
First up, I would like to state this blog does not relate to the privacy regarding my website.
Do you remember, a while back, when you could anything you wanted – without people knowing. Well, anything within reason of the law that is. (But I’m sure back then it was still easier to get away with crimes.). So why is it, that everything we do now, in today’s society, is logged? Is that at all right?
You hear the saying “Big Brother is watching you” based on the amount of CCTV camera’s there are around – heck, I’m sure that’s true to! You drive a car, it’s registered to you, to your address, if that cars seen on multiple CCTV camera’s then to a certain extent, they know where you might be driving – or how often you drive that way.
The same can be said with yourself just walking, I’m sure most of us have a passport, or perhaps a driving license, if not, then at least some form of photographic ID (Even if it’s a educational ID badge!), they then have your face on camera and with facial recognition they can very easily, and quite quickly link that to you and your address, and as per the car, they can probably develop your daily routine.
Now this is where the technology era comes in, and how scary it really is behind the scenes – the things we don’t see, the things they might, perhaps, not want us to see and that is the tracking, everything you will ever do on the internet will be logged by one PC or another, everything you do is more than likely to be logged by your ISP (Internet Service Provider), from then onwards it’s more than likely to be kept, but of course, you might expect them to do that, they are giving you the internet! … But would you expect other websites to do it too?
Yes? No? Well, essentially, they do, almost every website you visit your IP (Internet Protocol) Address will be logged and your UA (User Agent) will be logged. A little bit lost yet? Let me try to make it clearer, your IP address is specific to your household, although it may be “recycled” for use by other people within that internet company, should they need to, they can track it to you (only law enforcement can do this), as for your UA, this tells the website the OS (Operating System) you’re using – Windows 7, Windows XP, Mac OSx etc. and the web browser you’re using – Firefox, Google Chrome, Internet Explorer. Scared yet? Almost every website you visit receives this information.
Yeah, I admit, it might not seem scary, or then again, it might, but the one thing that did startle me is Facebook’s new “tracking” system with their “Recommended Pages”, I published a status the other day with the word “BETA” in, the “recommended” I ‘like’ the page “BETA”, this also happened a few other times, with other items. However, that’s Facebook, let’s take a look at Google, I noticed their new feature a while back called “Web History”. I decided to view it, check it out. It startled me a little bit, everything I have ever searched (On a College Mac, Home PC, Mobile Device) whilst logged into my Google Account is there. Now that, that did scare me.
Of course, I might well be looking far too deeply into things, but what I’m trying to say is compare life now, to life then, our lives are no longer “private”, in fact, I’d say they’re open to anyone with the power!
Internet Stalking
I was browsing the internet the other week when I came across this… http://wn.com/itsdaniel0. No, I wasn’t googling myself, I’m not that vain. I can’t remember what I was searching now, but the fact is, I found a website which a bunch of my videos on it. Truth be told, this did scare me, it’s a “World News” site and I’m on it. How am I supposed to react, maybe I wouldn’t mind so much if I’d been told about it, but I wasn’t -That’s even scarier.
But then that got me thinking. How easy is it to stalk someone over the internet? The answer: Very Easy. Think about it, a majority of us place ourselves all over the internet, take Facebook for example. You sign up, you enter your full name, your date of birth (DOB) and your place of birth and where you live, now that’s quite a lot of information already. Eventually, overtime, you do status updates, some become regular such as “Walking to this place”. So at the moment, from the stalkers perspective, you live in this town and you walk to this place almost everyday.
See what I’m getting at here? Not only that, with Facebook, every time you “like” something it goes towards your interests, so now this “stalker” knows what you’re interested in, what films your into, music you like, heck if you post the status “Night” they even know what time you go to bed each night. Of course, if you do the same in the morning they know when you wake up, perhaps they’re even “subscribed” to your status updates, so they know they exact times.
So you see, finding out information about some is scarily easy, the worst thing about it, not many us know and some of us don’t even care what we place online.