As you can see, the title Privacy is in quotation marks. This would be because we say we have privacy or need privacy in today's world when in reality, almost everything about you and your life is exposed to the public or our government. You will never actually have true privacy in this world when the government knows everything... our name, age, date of birth, location, address, and so much more. With Artificial Intelligence improving and updating every day, it is so much easier for popular media platforms such as Facebook, Apple, and Twitter to collect our personal data, track our digital footprint and sell that information to other companies and even the government. Every time we join a new social media platform, we enter another contract where we give away more information as well as our right to privacy. Those companies now own every single thing their users post on their accounts, and the users unknowingly lost their entire right to privacy. 
When I was watching the videos posted on our private blog page, I was extremely concerned with how much our society lacks personal privacy. Especially when watching "How Revenge Porn Turns Lives Upside Down" by Dairteh Chisolm, I was disturbed when hearing how her toxic ex-husband attempted to sabotage her by uploading pictures of her onto a personal website. Chisolm is a well-known TV personality who received backlash from this, which led to her 11-month-long court case and 13 trips to fight for her privacy rights in court. This is scary in our generation to think that we lose the right to whatever is posted, whether we choose to post it or not. One wrong decision made out of spite can ruin someone's life in an instant and can never be taken back. It is terrifying that artificial intelligence becomes smarter and advances every day making people more susceptible to being tricked in to giving away all rights to their privacy. Harmful content is posted every day, and once it is posted, it can never be taken back. In all honesty, anything that is ever recorded, written, typed, or said over any form of technology will live forever. People are always warned that nothing is ever really deleted, even if it is in your hidden camera roll; that content is most likely already uploaded and saved to an artificial intelligence program somewhere, even after you delete it. Our society needs to combat this by being more aware and not letting the government and companies take advantage of our rights.
Until researching for this blog, I had not realized how often data breaches occurred and did not realize how deep data tracking goes into our personal lives. Research shows that the average probability that an organization will have a data breach of some kind has increased from 25.6% to 27.7% in the past year. That sounded crazy to me when I was thinking, "what could a company possibly do with my birthday? Information about what I like, shop, or follow" but this data can be made useful to agencies and the government in so many ways. That is why all of these platforms, especially big social media companies, will sell our information to make a profit. The companies buying this information can now use this information for whatever they please and are able to make predictions and assumptions about us in order to manipulate us for their gain. It sounds cruel and odd to use information like where we like to shop, but it all boils down to money and power. It is crazy that all of these people will invade and take away others' right to privacy and their basic human rights for money, greed, and power.
Social Media Tracking
Billions of users from around the world will blindly and willingly give their personal information and permission to use it on huge social media platforms. It is so easy to simply click the "I accept terms and conditions" without actually reading the contract that is put in front of us. Everyone trusts the platform, so why should I question their motives? The answer to that is you should not have to, you should be able to feel safe using online social platforms, but when huge and vital security breaches happen, like the Facebook data breach of 2015, where over 533 million users got their data stolen and publicly posted, you are forced to take a step back and ask if you just gave up your entire right to privacy to this little app on your phone. It is a scary thought, and that is why we need to be aware of social tracking, phishing, and information leaks.
Overall, we just need to be more aware of the tracking and privacy breaches that occur online and off. Once we are aware, we can more clearly see when things are not what they seem. The government should be protecting our privacy rights and side with us when someone takes away that right by leaking information that was not theirs. We must take back our personal privacy rights and not let the technology giants take advantage of our lives.
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