Privacy

New Media has definitely improved our everyday lives and how we communicate with each other in the last couple of years. With that, one of the biggest things we have to give up is our privacy. There is very little privacy in new media, especially social media. Many websites are highly susceptible to being hacked and information being leaked. The Facebook security breach left over 30 million accounts exposed. Our location is also constantly being tracked by our phones and devices yet we allow it in order to get full functionality out of apps and other functions. Nothing is private once you put it out there. There are always ways to bypass it and everything you do online is easily tracked and recorded. For example, everything you've ever Googled is stored in a database by Google and you'd be surprised exactly how much information Google has about you. Even if you "delete" the history, you aren't really deleting it because Google keeps it. If you're a celebrity and have a following, you're privacy decreases even less. Once a celebrity posts anything, people screenshot and save it and even if the person deletes it, it lives on forever. There is always evidence of what you do on social media. Many jobs in the era of new media also look at applicants social media pages and make sure there isn't anything harmful or behavior that would paint them in a bad image then proceed to make a decision about hiring the applicant. You can find so much information about someone just by knowing their full name and searching it on Google. It's very alarming! Social media networks also share your information with many other companies and use advanced technology to personalize your online experience. Have you ever spoke about something out loud but never actually searched it, then hours or days later there are ads about the exact thing you were talking about? It's happened to me a couple times and although many companies don't want to admit it, your phone and apps are always listening. Even your Amazon Echo, Siri and other smart devices listen in on what's being said and can take that information and you have very little say in it. If you don't accept the terms and conditions of a service, you can't use that service so people are not just going to stop using popular apps like Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter, etc.