My Thoughts and Opinions

In this post, I would like to explain the reason why I've talked and touched in so many aspects of different topics that could lead to my topic.

I personally feel that there are many ways that our private information can be leaked to the public and it is something we all must be aware of. Our personal information well, it's personal and it's not meant to be known to the public in the first place like our nationality ID, our credits, location, address and much more. I am always in a dilemma whether that does sacrificing our privacy for national security really helps?

After I did my readings and research, I personally find that sacrificing our privacy for national security does not work.

Global Positioning System (GPS) is great when it comes to helping us finding our stolen car or any lost family and friends. Then again, the consequences of owning a GPS that we might get stalked or something worst is much higher comparing to the benefits how our privacy is used for our location. It leaves us at a vulnerable position by merely owning and having a cellphone right in our pockets. A simple cellphone in our pocket can already potentially leak our location to someone else anytime and anywhere. How creepy is that? But non the less, we still use our cellphones and locations anyway regardless of the consequences. It is alright to have a GPS along side with you, but sacrificing it for national security is not a good idea because we don't know what our information will be used for.

It is true that anonymity gives us a louder voice on the Internet, protects our information. We can still speak our thoughts on the Internet with our identity but there is no 100% guarantee that our personal information will be safe even as someone that is anonymous let alone our identity. There is no full proof way in stopping people from being anonymous as well there for there will always be anonymity around the Internet. Even if we sacrifice our privacy and revealing our identity, there will still be anonymity around the Internet. If we do that, wouldn't it leave us in a more dangerous position? Wouldn't it be easier for identity thieves to attack us?

Firewalls are something that helps us protect our data and keeps our network filtered from unwanted sites. Is it possible that people can jump over our firewall? Is it possible that not everything will be properly filtered through firewall? According to my readings about the Great China wall that I have posted earlier, there are still people able to go through the Great China that is so heavily guarded and filtered, yet they can still go through it. If something that great and powerful still can be jumped over, what about a simple computer firewall? This just shows me that a firewall in my computer is not enough to stop any unwanted sites appearing on my screen.

Privacy on social network is highly dangerous. People can easily check who your family members are, where you live, your phone number, your email and even who you associate with every day simply by browsing through your social media. Social media is where people connect, which also connects information. Through one person's information, you can easily gather information about another person. Clicking on profiles, reading their comments and judging from their profile picture is enough to roughly know the character of this person themselves. Sometimes we wouldn't even realize that we are giving out more than our personal information to the public like our ID number etc. The security of social media is not as strong, because there are still hackers and data mining industry able to get your information without even holding your social media account itself. For example, sending private messages, spam messages, advertisement, pop ups and one simple click from us can expose our personal information to the public. Giving our privacy for national security, I don't see how it's really going to help in social network wise because even the smallest things shared on social media can easily give away our information.

The Internet is never a safe place in the very beginning but the benefit it brings for us is what keeps us from using it. It is up to us to have the basic and general knowledge on how to protect ourselves on the Internet is the easiest way for us to keep ourselves secure on the web.

(All of the above are purely my personal thoughts and opinions)