Online Privacy

 A lot of the issues brought up in regards to online privacy very much affect me and my family. Facebook is the app used the most by my parents, and it's the most notorious when it comes to stealing other people's information. A recurring problem I find on my mothers facebook page is that it keeps showing her more and more extreme political posts, to the point that she's gotten very uncomfortable and scared. A problem that affects my generation in regards to privacy concerns the platform “Discord”. A few months ago, there was a massive data leak, meaning that dozens of accounts information was left unsecured. More recently, they’ve begun to roll out an update that requires you to identify yourself with ID and a photo to gain access to certain features. 

I believe wholeheartedly that the government should be stepping in and truly putting regulations in place as to what sort of things these algorithms are able to do. Facebook should have an option nationwide to opt out of having your information gathered, and companies should be required to be more transparent as to what info is taken. In addition, that information should be easily and securely accessed, so that it can be deleted on request. The law introduced in California is already a very good step towards government intervention, and i hope something like it becomes the standard. 

There are quite a few ways to protect your online privacy. The most straightforward way is to directly avoid using social media as much as you possibly can. Of course, a lot of social media is used for communication, so the easiest way to not let your info spread is to use it only when needed to keep in touch with others, while not posting about your own life as much. There's also the option of using a VPN, which uses a program to change where computers register your location.

ID photos of 70,000 users may have been leaked, Discord says

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