Privacy and Surveillance in the Digital Age - Is it a concern?

Privacy and Surveillance in the Digital age have become a concern. If so, how and why?

In this digital age, things have become very easier and most of the things are just a click away. Convenience or ease of doing things and connectivity have seen a lot of transformation and improvement. Till this point, things appear good and healthy. The problem arises when we think about ensuring privacy. Surveillance is another factor that also leads to significant concern. We need to know whether privacy and surveillance in the digital age have become a concern. If so, how and why? Let's go through this article to find more about this topic. We use technologies, apps, softwares etc constantly. Are we not providing access to our private information by using such technical stuff? Are we not exposing ourselves? Is it impossible for such technologies to collect, store and analyse our personal data? The answer to these questions will unfold the actual situation and will expose us to the real situation.

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Digital companies to a great extent rely on the collection and monetisation of user data. This has led to surveillance capitalism, where a lot of companies collect massive and staggering amounts of data about individuals, their location, online behavior and browsing history. This information helps to draw a detailed profile of the user. This profile is eventually sold to the advertisers as well as third parties. So data plays a pivotal role for such companies, be it Facebook, Google or even Amazon. Without these data, the buying preferences of customers or their spending capacity cannot be gauged. So these data turn out to be extremely crucial for such digital companies.

You need to know the various types of surveillance as stated below : 

Corporate Surveillance. 

Government Surveillance.

Cyber Surveillance.

Social Media Surveillance.

• Under Corporate Surveillance, the data of individuals is collected for advertising. 
• Government Surveillance is all about collecting data or information about citizens for national security.
• Cyber Surveillance is about the data collected by cybercriminals and hackers meant for illegal use or malicious purposes.
• Social media Surveillance enables social media platforms to obtain data of users, including their interests, behaviour and patterns of interactions, etc.

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In the digital age, there is a great degree of possibility that you will fall back on some technical device or technology and use it, owing to the fact that these are convenient to use. Once you start using it,  unknowingly you will expose yourself to some extent, and you will end up sharing certain data or information which could be of a lot of value to somebody or the other. The beneficiary could be an entity like corporate, hackers, or in some cases Government also need these data, although the government won't use it for any immoral or illogical reasons. When data are collected without the knowledge of the concerned person, it could lead to severe damage to that person. Stolen data could lead to financial fraud, targeted advertising and surveillance. The risk is looming large.

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Certain measures can guard your data. For instance, use VPNs. Exercise extreme caution in social media and share limited data or information. It is essential to use a password that is pretty strong and can't be cracked so easily. These measures will keep your data safe and secure to some extent, although complete protection is something that cannot be ensured. The government should enact a law to safeguard the data of individuals. Total transparency and accountability must be enforced on companies that are known for collecting such data. Anyone found guilty of breaching laws on data security must be brought to book and punished severely by using legal means. These provisions must be included to strengthen data security.

Conclusion

The digital age has brought about significant benefits, but it has also created risks to individual privacy and autonomy. There is a need to come up with new measures to safeguard data relating to individuals. Government, its agencies and even private companies must come together to make a mechanism which will ensure the safety of individuals' data. Innovative measures must be introduced in the system to strengthen the effort of securing personal data.

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