As business and communications develop online, we spend more time shopping, reading news, or playing video games, and sharing data. This may raise concerns about online privacy and online security.
San Jose, CA (Merxwire) – According to research, American citizens often encounter problems when trying to access broadband Internet. According to one of the reports released by the Federal Communications Commission, there are 21 million Americans, most of whom are in rural areas, who cannot access high-speed Internet.
Although many people cannot successfully connect to high-speed Internet, nearly 90% of the American public can use high-speed Internet. According to data from Cnet, when a large population tends to stay more at home, the overall amount of digital data consumed has increased by almost 30% overall, while the online gaming sector has increased by 75%. However, a large part of the population lacks knowledge about online security and privacy, causing concerns about online privacy and online security.
The importance of online security is now stressed more than ever in the online entertainment industry. For example, traditional online gaming providers like Activision Blizzard do everything they can to comply with guidelines established by the GDPR, and more recently, CCPA (California Consumer Privacy Act) that was signed into law in June 2018. This requires them to clearly explain what information is being collected about their users, and with whom this data is shared.
Furthermore, iGaming companies like Betway casino have to put even more emphasis on privacy because, besides handling large caches of private data, they’re often managing cash deposits from thousands of consumers. For this reason, these entities always include a broad “privacy policy and security” section on their sites and try to educate customers about everything that creating an account on one of these platforms entails.
Besides reading these documents, the best things that a regular consumer can do to minimize the risk of having their data used inappropriately or stolen is to always use an updated antivirus when browsing the web, never open files or email attachments from unknown sources, create a unique password for each online service, and use virtual private network software to mask their online identity. It’s also advisable to use privacy-friendly web browsers such as DuckDuckGo or Brave Browser.
Besides avoiding potential attacks from computer hackers, online consumers also have to face the stark reality that when entering any online service, they’ll be tracked on average by nine unique pieces of spying code. After visiting 40 – 100 sites during a single web browsing session, the number of trackers can increase to a hundred or more, which becomes a significant privacy challenge. These trackers fall into a couple of different categories, but the vast majority of them are related to online advertising. They use cookies or fingerprinting, which enables companies to identify users based on the unique characteristics of the device they’re using when browsing the web.
This data is then fed to machine learning algorithms and used to create a unique profile of an individual on the web. Finally, the data is sold to the highest bidder among media buyers who employ different forms of online advertising, from Facebook and Google ads to native advertising, to display ads often seen on blogs.
In February 2020, New Mexico’s attorney general sued Google for spying on the state’s children and families under the guise of providing educational products in schools. The data collected included students’ personal locations, web browsing history, and even voice recordings. Unfortunately, nowadays this kind of behavior seems to be common practice among big tech companies.
This has led to the growing awareness of a new economy ecosystem called “surveillance capitalism,” where giant tech firms use big data and artificial intelligence to maximize their profits without caring for online privacy laws that are always one step behind the curve. For this reason, there are now more voices within the government calling to break up the big tech. But until this day comes to pass, consumers must either vanish from the web entirely or do everything in their power to sustain the vestiges of privacy they have left.