Your privacy: simply a matter of ethics?

In today’s society, we are so quick to release anything and everything about ourselves, our family and our friends. Social media sites are a part of everyday life and are commonly the first thing people check in the morning and the last thing we check at before we go to bed. Social media can strengthen relationships and it can ruin relationships. It nearly controls every move we make at this point, and is also being watched. Many people don’t consider the implications of their actions on social media- they will post negative things about coworkers, pictures of themselves holding a drink in a club with neon lights, and possibly join or like certain groups that don’t shed a good light on the person. Just because we delete certain information and data off of the internet does not mean that it is lost forever. The sites we use, such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram can all access and save our pictures and words into a “bank” of sorts, and can be pulled out to use against us. As of January 2014, 74% of adults with internet access use social network sites. This is such a huge majority of the world that will intentionally allow sites that don’t disclose all policies to access information that they most likely wouldn’t let them access under any other circumstances. Just by going online and going onto these sites, your birthday, your preferences, things you look up, your credit history, your gender, race and age- nearly EVERYTHING- can be tracked by various companies, the sites themselves and the government. The companies involved in tracking Google searches and social media information do that so that they can better customize the advertisements they send out to you. For instance, if you are a 15 year old girl who normally searches for pictures of One Direction members, looks up funny One Direction videos on YouTube, and visits the One Direction fansite, the beauty store Ulta may have an advertisement waiting for you that is trying to sell One Direction perfume. If you are a 35 year old man who does most of his shopping at Bass Pro for fishing poles and guns, you will be targeted by companies, such as Bass Pro, that sell fishing poles and guns. In the government aspect, different federal agencies can take information from phone companies and social media sites if they need to know searches and messages from a suspect person. While that sounds completely crazy and honestly ‘Big Brother’, it is definitely happening all the time. While I enjoy my own social media sites, if the privacy breach becomes too extreme, I may have to reevaluate my priorities, and I believe that if too much of our lives are privy to companies and government, so should the rest of America. We will only regain our Constitutional right to privacy when we take a stand and refuse the product being pushed at us. The big question is though, can we give up the attention and hundreds of likes?