Reading the Terms of Service
Frankly, reading through the terms of service for both Medium and Snapchat made me even more worried. Reading it all made me feel like I had to remember specific rules to follow for whenever I use Medium or Snapchat. It kind of made me paranoid thinking that there was something I was violating by accident. In Snapchat’s terms of service, it is stated that although you own your own content, Snapchat is granted access to use that content. I know a lot of people use Snapchat as a mindless way to send informal messages and pictures. I know a lot of people are less mindful with what they send on Snapchat because it “goes away”. It turns out, this is not exactly true.
Reading all of the readings for this week makes me feel a little naïve. All this time, I have been blindly signing something that could really include anything. The “Terms of Service; Didn’t Read” browser extension is really smart and a lot of people could benefit from it. It is cool how it is basically like a little highlight reel for each different set of terms and conditions. A lot of people, myself included, assume that there is nothing really worth reviewing in the terms because so many others have gotten away with not reading. It is not each individual company’s fault that people do not read from top to bottom in full, but I can assume that there exist some companies who take advantage of that.
After reading the gizmodo article “All of the Creepy Things Facebook Knows About You”, I realized just how much information Facebook really is collecting. They know far more than what occurs on their site alone. There are a lot of sites that will allow you to sign in using Facebook. Every time you do that, you are asked if you are okay sharing this data with Facebook. Every time, I click yes without even really thinking about it. It is a slightly easier way of doing things and is a route that I have chosen multiple times because I am too lazy to make another password. I think it is interesting that the ads Facebook is generating is a result of every single action that you have ever taken on the internet. In the gizmodo article, it lists 99 pieces of information that Facebook can collect on every single person from location to participation in a timeshare. The list extends past only the explicitly stated 99 pieces of information, but the point of the list was to show just how many data points goes into generating ads.
I found the story about the little girl ordering a dollhouse from her family’s Amazon Echo particularly amusing. The fact that those kinds of devices are always listening and catching key phrases is odd. By setting up those kinds of devices in the house, people are actively agreeing to let Alexa be another set of ears that can also store information. Overall, our society seems less concerned with internet privacy and fully understanding what we agree to by using the internet on a daily basis.
