All Your Data is Being Collected and Analyzed and This is Why You Should Care

In the digital world we live in today, our privacy is lacking. Our information is collected through a process called data mining, which can put your information at risk of being hacked. Along with this, it can be sold to other companies and even the government. But people are willing to compromise their privacy partly because they are unaware of the extent of what's being collected, but also because using the services that are collecting and potentially exposing your data, such as FaceBook or Amazon, are convenient and provide useful services. The government has also allowed for this to be done and has taken advantage of these technologies. Everyone should be more concerned and aware of what’s going on behind the scenes with their data because it affects every one of our lives much more than you know.

Technology is constantly developing at a rapid rate. Many are unaware that with these advancements, there are undesirable consequences of the invasion of privacy that comes with it. In doing my research for this paper, one of the things that surprised me the most was the Supreme Court Carpenter v United States case. This case questioned whether or not one's cell phone location history, tracked by the cellphone company, could be looked at and used to convict someone of a crime. In the end, the courts ruled that it was unconstitutional for the government to obtain this data and use it against its citizens. However, the government continued to track locations, just by purchasing the data from apps that track locations. They had, in a way, gone around the new law to continue to keep tabs on citizens. The second thing that stuck with me the most is the smaller ways that data mining affects everyone. The data that is collected can be used to push targeted ads and political campaigns to specific people to get them to buy or vote in their certain way. These ads are meant to show what those specific people want to see. This is one of the affects of data mining that you don’t think about in your daily life, but can have a huge affect. After reading my paper, my goal is for everyone to feel like they know more about what's going on behind the scenes in their everyday life. I hope that everyone recognizes that what's going on is out of their control, but the knowledge takes some of that control back.