Once I had a really big fight with my boyfriend
when he logged in on my Facebook page
and read three really big paragraphs I had written to a friend of mine about
him. I can't remember properly but in that time I was really mad at him, and I
yelled that he had not shown respect to my privacy and space. I got to think
much later that, although he was, indeed, disrespectful and shouldn't have
intruded on my personal life, I can't claim for privacy on a Facebook page. It simply has no sense at
all.
Everything we type, everything we talk to each
other on any social network is being stored somewhere. Of course, much of it is
not being used, is virtual waste. Gigas and gigas of texts, images and files we
trade with our friends everyday through these social networks. The major
companies haven't found yet a use for it. They are just storing it, and as the
new technologies just advance - in a way that virtual space doesn't seem to
become a problem in the future - they just don't care. But the fact is that
there is a LOT of data being stored, and the big companies have easy access to it.
So isn't it kinda worrying, that every little
thing we type to each other is somewhere, in some hard disk, stored, just
waiting to become useful? Yes it is. Imagine how misread can be all this data
if, somehow, you become a suspect of a crime you haven't actually committed.
Imagine if you said things to your doctor or your lawyer - things that should
have the privilege to be maintained secret - and they hack and manage to get
them? I know this scenery might sound a little too fantastic and unreal, but
these are only to illustrate, in a overwhelming way, what could happen with all
the things we store online and we call "private".
For now, they haven't yet found a way to use
all this data. Most of it is being stored and it is slowly starting to worry
main TI companies, not because of the virtual space, for I just said, there is
enough of it, but because it might reach an amount that it becomes impossible
to process it. They are, at this very moment, trying to find a way to process
this data and to make it useful. Yes, all your texts and all your stuff you put
online and you don't want all of the people to find out or see - all this stuff
is actually being processed. They are trying to find patterns, to use it
somehow, trying to turn it into marketable information. But they haven't yet.
Although you may think that sites as Amazon.com and others are really
intelligent cause they seem to know what products would you want to buy, they
are not using "private" information to run this algorithms. They are
using information based on what you searched online, what, I must warn you if
you don't know already, is not private.
Not a single word you search online is private.
But concerning the data and texts that all
social networks assure you that it belongs to you and to you only, you should
know that it is being processed. They are trying to find a way to use it, but
they haven't yet. What will become of us when they do? That said, here's my
advice: do not put your whole life on the internet. Whether you like it or not,
it'll go global.
