Online Privacy is an Oxymoron

Our class looked at the misconception of many adults and teenagers that what one does online is private once the privacy settings are adjusted. We read excepts from Lori Andrew's I know Who You Are and I Saw What You Did and Eli Priser's The Filer Bubble and examined Exif data on photos. As part of the Unit evaluation we asked students to explain why Online Privacy is an Oxymoron...

                                                                       Photo Source: SaFoXy's PhotoStream

                                                                       http://www.flickr.com/photos/77068017@N07/6779368830/

Liah discusses data aggregators...

There is no online privacy. Its a huge scam that comforts people into believing that they are protected online when they really are not. Once something is online its online forever. For example, data aggregators take all the information about you from what you search and post and create a "second self" or an online image of you. They use this image and sell it to say your insurance. Say you searched cancer. Now that your insurance knows that information that you searched cancer, they can now raise your insurance because there is the chance that you could have cancer. Also anyone can get around the barriers of the finite privacy walls that enclose your online profiles. Anyone can find you online from almost anything you do or say.