In his TED Talk “What will a future without secrets look like?”, Alessandro Acquisti discusses the lack of privacy that we have today due to the internet and Big Data. Acquisti points out, “When someone tells you, “People don’t care about privacy,” consider whether the game has been designed and rigged so that they cannot care about privacy”. I believe that Acquisti is making a very good point here. We almost never know what is included in the Terms & Conditions which we agree to on every internet web page. Though the site is usually telling you what they are using your information for data for, there is no way to pick and choose which parts of the Terms & Conditions you are okay with, and which go too far. Aquisti acknowledges how little this transparency does for the user, especially because the sites still request an egregious amount of information. For high school teens trying to fit in with their peers, they will mindlessly agree to anything that allows them to interact with their peers online. This poses the question of just how much personal information users will unknowingly agree to share. This is extremely concerning because when we check boxes to agree to giving up our information, there is no one to blame but ourselves. Internet sites and Big Data collectors have coerced the public into giving them everything they think they need to improve society.
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