Here we are living in the era of Information Technology. Our life is now depended on technologies in the form of Internet, from sharing our thoughts to buying cosmetics. We can connect to the global in our finger touch. Still there are more debates happening in the name of "Science is boon or bane". Result of that everyone knows, it will depend on the way we using that. Is that not meaning that we should not harness the power of science. So I just want to share something I read & understand and giving you rights to take your decision of boon or bane.
Now in every
browsers you have the option to synchronize your bookmarks, search
history from various devices by logging in your account. So it will
be helpful to recollect all the helpful websites you found in your
office, or in your mobile/tablet during the travel. And it will feel
great for your surfing experience. So all of your surfing results
carries the details of your interests , daily habits, the time you
spending in social networks, items you bought from the retailers.
These details are synchronized with your account.
These interests of
you are used to give you the best results when you searching
something. So once you logged in your account and your every
activities in web will be traced. Last week, Snapdeal announced that
they collecting one terra bytes of their registered users interests
daily instead they collected only 16GB of data before a year and
based on that they are giving best results when the user logged in
next time. Consider, you are willing to buy one smart phone and your
price range is between Rs.10,000 to Rs.20,000. You are searching for
various mobiles from your friends suggestions to various interests
and you fed up then declared not to buy for now and logged out from
the site. The next day when you are visiting that site and logging
in, you will find more details of mobiles within the price range, the
features you interested in the home page.
This algorithm is
followed by all the familiar social networks and sites. In Facebook,
every likes, comments and shares of your account collected and
processed through the algorithms. Based on that result, news
feeds(home page) will display the posts which you are interested more
at first then you least interested. Flipkart and amazon doing the
same. Every move of yours are captured and in back end its processed
through the algorithms. Its kind of marketing , understanding the
user and focusing on showing the interested parts to user. There are
thousands of programmers behind creating these beautiful algorithms
which handles user data. The more you search the more accurate result
will reach you. So these details would be helpful for you to provide
expected results on your queries.
And we should know
how those giant companies growing by the user experience . Yes, its
your information they are gathering, its your money you spending on
them. You need to know at least what they are up to.
While sign up nor
installing software we have that great habit of saving time by
skipping terms and conditions. Yes, indeed they are mentioning
everything in terms and conditions regards how they getting your
information and how they processing it, security vulnerabilities,
precautions and more. Consider Facebook's terms&conditions, it
said they will never reveal user's personal details nor sell it to
third parties. But last year, they made one research that how
Facebook feeds/posts changes one person mental state. Yes, they
selected thousands of Facebook users without their knowledge and
showed them two types posts. For some of the users they showed the
feeds which are negative or making them feel uneasy and to other some
users the positive or making them feel crazy. In the result of
research, those users who went through the posts of negative posted
more depressed and negative status meanwhile other who come across
the posts of positive posted cheerful positive status. And they
revealed this results to public and said “we did this research is because we care about the emotional impact of Facebook and the people who use our product”. But in the quick judgment of the Internet, that argument was not universally accepted.
“Facebook didn’t do anything illegal, but they didn’t do right by their customers” said by the technology analyst. Hence, they can involve with the emotions of their customers without their knowledge.
As per their terms and conditions, they are not selling user's personal information to any third parties and but they involving privacy of user without their consent. Though these personal information of users helps them in some way yet it giving more way to giant companies to access users personal.
We could increase the choice our privacy with precautions.
Consider using Incognito window in Chrome or private window Firefox when accessing secured websites like banking and social networks. Because these wont keep track you by storing cookies and history in browser.
Try to logout once you finished with mail checking or social network, and don't open any other websites at the same time. Hence they will come to know about all your surfing history and interests.
Change your passwords often and add your mobile number to the account hence it will help in avoiding hacking problems.
To
be continued....
