Mr.Savoys Presentation-Journal Entry #5

On March 24th, Mr.Savoy came to our classroom to show us a presentation that talked a bit about what we had been discussing in class, which was "Facebook Follies" and the dangers of displaying personal data. He also asked the question, "Are you in control?". What he meant by this was that we are losing control of technology and the way we use it. When we send a text to the wrong person, forget a password, or have accounts hacked into, we are losing control of technology.

Mr. Savoy showed us a video by Jack Vale where he was doing a Social Media experiment. He was wondering how easy it would be to get strangers personal information by searching them from the tweets and and times people have "checked in" near his location. When he went up to random people with information he had gathered form Instagram and Facebook, they were freaked out and didn't fully understand how he could possibly know so much about them without ever meeting him before. People don't realize how easy it is to acquire "personal" information about someone. Private data is private for a reason, and more people should have come to the realization that privacy settings are there for a reason, and a small comment or picture by you could have some serious consequences, or cause someone like Jack Vale to learn more about you than maybe you thought possible from a stranger.

After having seen this presentation, I found an article that talked about ad tracking, which was also briefly discussed in Mr. Savoy's presentation. The article was titled "Ad Tracking-Is Anything Being Done?". It talked about computer users privacy and how there have been complaints on both ends. In 2011, DNT technology (Do Not Track) was introduced to protect computer users privacy, and now there is downloadable software to specifically monitor your website activity. Most websites still have cookies that are sent to your computer after you have visited their website, and that's why people are wary. There is another three part article you can read called "The Paranoid's Survival Guide". Where it goes into greater detail of ad tracking and it's invasion of privacy.