Privacy, Online & Off

     Over the summer I watched a documentary about the website "Is Anyone Up" this was a site that provided revenge porn and people would frequently visit it. It gained such a massive following that the man who created it slowly started to become a celebrity and he started to make a decent living off of it through ad revenue. 

    The documentary was very appalling to watch because there were hundreds of women that were affected by this individual and the incident ruined their lives. It was heartbreaking to watch these women break down while describing how they felt when they found out their nude pictures were out on the internet for everyone to see. 

    When one of the videos featured Darieth Chisolm and her experience with revenge porn, I immediately thought back to that documentary and how the man that created the website did not face a lot of criminal punishment. The only reason he was arrested was not because of sharing explicit pictures of women without their consent, but because he had hacked a few of their devices. 

    This video in particular got me thinking about how much technology can hurt people even though it was originally meant to help. When doing things today with technology you must always make sure you are doing the right thing, because you might not get a chance to undo that mistake. 

    These issues directly have an impact on my life because I have practically spent my whole life using technology and have always been aware of the fact that if I make one mistake it could potentially ruin my life. 

    Learning to protect oneself from making mistakes on the internet is something that everybody should learn to do, because online privacy is quickly becoming non-existent. If people do not start to learn how to keep their private information private, it can potentially make their lives very difficult as they have made themselves an easy target for hackers. 

    You can protect your personal information by refusing to use websites that request this type of information or you can create fake information about yourself, in order to make sure these companies are unable to track the things you do.

    I do believe that the government has some responsibility when it comes to these issues as they have the power to stop these types of things happening to people. It is perfectly understandable that there were not many laws preventing these types of things happening as technology was still relatively new, but there should be more laws today as technology is a part of everyday life.