Why your internet habits could be more dangerous than you think.
Why your internet habits could be more dangerous than you think.
The internet’s a dangerous place, we all know that. We’ve read the shocking articles: slutshaming, revenge porn, websites promoting hate speech and so much worse. And, yeah, Black Mirror doesn’t make us super excited about future complications.
But what about the internet we use every day; the seemingly safe space that helps us meet our soulmates, keep in touch with friends and connect with family? Do we have anything to worry about? Sadly, in the age of no privacy where personal secrets can be unearthed in moments, we have plenty to fear online, even if it isn’t immediately apparent.
Privacy? What privacy?
It’s obvious that in order to attract a potential partner on a dating website or a dream job from an online recruiter, we should put our best foot forward and avoid uploading off-putting photos. However, most internet users leave much more of a digital footprint than they think.
“Most people don’t realise just how much information they are giving up,” says Matt Buckland, head of talent at UK-based fashion company Lyst. “Simply taking a picture someone has used online, I can use Google Reverse Image Search to find other places where the person has used the same image. This will lead to social networks, dating profiles and business websites,” he adds. “Even if someone has [beefed up their privacy settings], you can often search for photos their friends have shared.”
Perhaps even scarier than this is the sheer amount of information those trusty search engines and online marketers know about you.
The fact that certain websites can access your microphone to listen to your conversations, track keywords you use to send you relevant advertisements and follow you around the internet, constantly bombarding you with images of products you may have once browsed, means that even the most innocuous search or share on the internet is never innocent. Every move you make is tracked by businesses seeking to make money from targeting as much as they can about you based on everything you’re telling them.
Given this, it might seem impossible to strike a balance between maintaining a professional presence and being able to inject a bit of personality into our online profiles. Matt says it’s fine to be ourselves on the internet – as long as we know what we’re getting into.
“Be true to yourself, but take the time to understand security settings and read the small print when signing up for new apps and services,” he says. “You never know who might be able to see.”
Taking responsibility
Just a few years ago, instead of Googling virtually any question conceivable, you’d have to go to a library, look it up in an encyclopaedia and be presented with a brisk, unpersonalised answer. But with the internet, it’s like having a knowledgeable friend beside us everywhere we go.
Aside from making us much less reliant on remembering facts, it’s easy to trust something that’s so readily there with all the answers, but maybe we’re too trusting. Maybe that’s why data leaks are getting more common.
“If the internet has erased all hopes of an individual having a private life, chances are, it’s all their fault,” says Lee Munson, a security researcher at tech company Comparitech.
“While a certain degree of personal information does enter the public realm through data breaches, the vast majority comes from people voluntarily sharing way too much about themselves on social networks and other platforms,” says Lee.
Lee has little sympathy for those who find themselves compromised by the internet: as hard as it is to hear, chances are, we have no one to blame for our lack of privacy but ourselves, giving potential dates, employers or even stalkers access to our personal information.
Despite the fact no one should ever have the right to share intimate photos that do not belong to them, revenge porn and cloud hacks have been regular headlines in the last few years, with these security breaches reaching right up to the highest echelons of Hollywood, and the non-famous among us no less at risk.
According to Lee, what we store, share and search for can always be used against us. “A quick look at the largest social media sites reveal startling mistakes, such as photos of drunken nights out... and many individuals who quite happily talk about the most intimate parts of their private lives in far too much detail,” he says.
“It’s easy to trust something that’s so readily there with all the answers, but maybe we’re too trusting.”
The world as we know it
While a lack of privacy affects us personally, the internet also affects the way we live on a global scale. Rewind to this time last year: would life-changing events such as the Brexit vote or the election of Donald Trump ever have seemed like a reality just 12 months ago?
According to Dr Tracy Loh, senior lecturer at the Department of Communications and New Media at the National University of Singapore, the ease of showing our support for social causes with the click of a button can lead to “slacktivism”, where we “feel good and assuage our consciences by sharing causes but without the activism translating to offline action.” The breezy way in which we can spread news without verifying the truth first means that fake news spreads like wildfire.
“Fake news is often sensational and clickbaitworthy, leading us to share without actually reading the article fully,” says Dr Tracy.
“In addition, due to social media algorithms, our feeds will show us information based on what we or our friends have previously ‘liked’. This creates an echo chamber effect where we hear only the news that is congruent with our existing opinions.”
Dr Tracy says this “echo chamber effect” can explain why we end up dumbstruck when the seemingly unlikely happens. “It gives us a warped world view and we believe that everyone thinks the way we do instead of realising that only our circle of friends think the same way.”
It’s not just anonymous keyboard warriors who are sharing and spreading fake news, but the most powerful people in the world too.
According to expert in fake news William Watkin, Trump himself used fake news to his advantage during the US elections. “Trump was in his tower on a daily basis, tweeting false facts and wild accusations, often gleaned from fake news sites, that he was giving directly to his followers,” he says.
“These tweets became memes, shared by supporters and his enemies alike, causing a spike online that the mainstream media couldn’t ignore. They would then report on his tweets and he was able to become the media story on a daily basis and totally manipulate the media agenda.”
According to William, the way we use the internet has changed the very essence of the relationship between the media and politics. “In the past, politicians tried to influence the media through spin doctors and pollsters, now we have memeweavers and trollsters,” he says.
The internet has ushered in an era of reduced attention spans and the desire for instant gratification, making clickbait-y headlines and memes the way to readers’ hearts. This incentivises news editors to churn out stories that are not necessarily newsworthy, but guaranteed to garner clicks. In short, it’s “memeworthiness” that makes articles newsworthy.
With supposedly important stories grabbing headlines, we’re all contributing to the problem: even an innocent click on a story that looks intriguing (but possibly false) changes the very value of a story, with those that seem clickable being elevated above those that are genuinely newsworthy.
“Due to social media algorithms, our feeds will show us information based on what we or our friends have previously ‘liked’.”
An offline life?
To cast your laptop, iPad and iPhone away, never again to spend those endless hours on YouTube, would be asking too much: in this day and age, a life without the internet seems virtually impossible.
But the next time you’re entering your bank details into a new app or even innocently sharing a well-meaning article you haven’t read, take a moment to think about it first: you could not only be affecting your own personal life, but the very way the world works.
Images 123RF.com/Click Photos.
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