Present & Future of Online Privacy: Where is it Heading

The future of online privacy is a debatable topic, especially due to the recent privacy scandals lurking around on news outlets and social media. If you have been living under a rock and have no access to smartphone or the internet, then we must inform you that your most personal information is up for grabs and up for sale. Nowadays, it is quite normal for your private information to be captured and sold to the highest bidder for a variety of purposes. However, the thing that most internet users are unaware of is just how quickly this invasion of privacy is evolving and harming our lives. There was a time when none of us even had a clue about the US government’s secret surveillance programs, but thanks to Edward Snowden, the extent of online privacy dilemma became all too obvious. What is even more appalling is that tech giants like Facebook, Google, along with major advertising and financial institutions have ridden their hands dirty in this filth, all for the sake of generating billions of dollars in revenue. We have been brainwashed from an early point in our lives in to thinking that major corporations follow a set of protocols that safeguard the privacy of its customers. In fact, we also used to believe that companies do not directly sell our private information to third-party clients. However, the truth of the matter is that the sanctity of privacy has been trampled a while ago.

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Privacy Scandal & its Sensitivity

Keeping in reference with the recent slew of privacy scandals, who can deny that the most controversial privacy scandal of the 21^st century involved tech giant Facebook. The social media platform has been at the center of media attention this year as a major privacy scandal unraveled itself. Long story short, a third party company was able to siphon private information of more than 50 million Facebook users, which included their phone numbers, email addresses, and other sensitive data. What is even worse is that this massive violation of privacy has been speculated to alter the results of the 2016 general elections in the US. At the very end of the technology spectrum, most internet users simply assume that their sensitive information goes from one point to another without being tempered with; however, this information is vastly misleading, which is evident from the recent reports on the safe transmission of digital data. With every passing day, more and more privacy scandals are brought in to light, which involves cybercriminals stealing your private data for monetary benefits. Databases containing telephonic, instant messages and email conversations are the most vital targets for any cybercriminal. To elaborate on the sensitivity of this topic, perhaps we should look at some matrices that will help put our words into perspective. For that, we are going to list some of the social media statistics relating the amount of data of every seven in ten American adults ranging from ages 18 to 29.

• Around 6,000 tweets are posted to Twitter every second of the day.

• Around 9,000 photos are posted to Snapchat every single second.
• 230 million Facebook users post around 300,000 new profile statuses and around 130,000 photos every minute.

Future Prediction of Online Privacy

Nobody can deny the benefits of internet revolution, since it has provided us with a world of information at our fingertips. However, we must also keep one thing in to consideration and that is, there is nothing free in this world. We often willingly or unwillingly hand over our private information to corporations in order to receive some sort of value in return. In the past providing, someone with your private information would be considered absolutely repulsive. In fact, several authors have accurately highlighted the importance of protecting private data in sort of a revelation. Nowadays, private information is considered fuel for major corporations, as they would not survive without us. However, we still provide Facebook, Google and Twitter with all sorts of our important information without giving a second thought even though they might compromise our privacy. There are many privacy tool that offer internet anonymity, like for instance proxies, Tor networks, Privacy Badgers and VPNs. However, the most robust tool has to be the best VPN service, which provides network-wide encryption. People still tend to browse the internet unsecured and in the open. However, considering the ongoing trend and technological advancements people are likely to opt for anonymity tools.

Conclusion

The audacity of the above discussed security and privacy scandals are a living proof of flaws in our system and a learning curve for any regulatory authority. Individual internet users should be concerned about their own security and privacy, since safeguarding them self is not something expensive or out of reach for most people. On the contrary, a privacy tool like proxies, Tor networks and VPNs like NordVPN are cheap and effective tools for internet privacy. As of now, we can only hope that regulatory authorities introduce new robust metrics for online privacy that would limit corporation from abusing our private data.