Conspiracy a question not enough people ask themselves is who is watching me on the internet. More and more these days companies government agencies and other people have the ability to monitor and watch our activities online.
We sometimes learn more about the extent of this monitoring via whistleblowers and other leak sources the question is are you ever alone on the internet. Most people have home routers set up nowadays, when using wi-fi routers at home if you have not secured them you may be at risk people within range of your wi-fi may be able to see at least some of what you are doing on your network.
They may be able to see the devices connected to your network and shared folders etc. We suggest you secure your network better to be safe than sorry. Internet cafes and public wi-fi are a similar risk to an unsecured home wi-fi but in this situation there’s a lot more opportunity for people to be listening in. There could be someone very close to you with a simple piece of software that can sniff out your traffic and record everything.
Cookies are small bits of data that the internet sites use to track what you are doing on a site to begin with these were more of a technical necessity to make the internet easier to use. They provided a better experience to the users so they could move between pages in the sites more easily. However they have now become more of a way of tracking what you are looking at and being used to collect marketing data from your internet use.
You may remember when a site never warned you that it was using cookies, however due to legislation this has now changed and sites should warn you they are using them once the cookie is installed on your computer, companies can use it to track your activity online you can notice this when certain internet sites seem to know what adverts to show you when you arrive at their site. Whilst they are mainly used for marketing and targeting adverts, you can wonder what else they are used for.
The proliferation of camera surveillance in our society is ever on the increase cameras can be found everywhere, particularly if you live in the uk. They are on the streets, in the shops and on the motorways. These are all connected to central points via networks. One would hope that these networks are secure from hacking or interference from government bodies etc. If not the question needs to be asked, who is watching us through all of these cameras.
The introduction of artificial intelligence and large data processing abilities could be very scary, if they are used to process all these feeds. Not only that also consider all laptops and phones have web cameras built in too. Also consider the cheap web-based security cameras you install at home most of these are based on a very simple web server design which may not be as secure as you think.
Is it only me but i think i have had product suggestions directed at me related to the content of emails i have either received or sent. This could be attributed to the email services used scanning and analyzing the emails for word patterns and then matching them to algorithms which suggest products i may be interested in.
I am sure if i have been looking for say woodworking tools on amazon similar suggestions have arrived on facebook shortly after. You may not be too concerned about receiving targeted adverts via the scanning of your email, however again the question is who else has access to this content and for what other purposes is it being used.
Microphones are found on most computers and devices nowadays, I’m sure the ones on mobile phones are well protected but what about those on other devices. Sometimes the security on the microphones on web connected devices is less rigid and can be hacked. Unlike a camera where a piece of tape can block the lens, there isn’t much you can do to block a microphone. If you want to keep your conversations private, it’s better to do it in person.
Internet service providers or isp’s are the companies that provide your access to the internet, usually there’s nothing much stopping them from tracking everything you do on the internet, as they are the ones giving you the access.
There are some ways to connect to the internet to ensure that your activities are encrypted however then you have to trust that provider to make sure they are not monitoring your activities before the encryption stage.
Mobile locational data, how many of us have our mobile location data switched on all the time. It’s needed for things like google maps and route planning etc it can be very useful for some apps to provide local suggestions and the like.
However who else is tapping into this and watching every move you make. The pokemon game had people running around the country with the location being fed into the app to provide prizes and rewards. It’s a good way of finding out where people are, this data can be used to place adverts in front of you depending on your geographic position again this could be a little spooky.
So if you do not want to be tracked, turn off your location. However even then the mobile phone networks can trace you by logging which cell base stations your phone has connected to. If you really do not want to be tracked leave your phone at home.
With the extent to the internet nowadays you cannot find much without the use of a search engine. The search engines track the words and letters you type and can use these to build a profile of you, down to the content you search for. This profile can then be used to place information around the search results which they think you may be interested in selling this profile information to marketing agencies can be a very lucrative business. Who else do they sell the information to though.
Social media must be the marketing agency’s dream, when you use social media the provider knows all your details.
