Digital Privacy: Myth or Lost Art

When I was growing up, sharing ideas, life events, and having discussions meant an exercise to bond with friends. It made the bond of like-minded individuals stronger, it meant creating friendships that lasted lifelong.

Somewhere this was replaced by shiny devices to hide behind for curated interactions.

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The advent of the Internet

Then came the mainstream internet. We all revelled in its uniqueness and its superpower to connect each one of us and the world in general. It quickly replaced the exercise of building friendships with staying connected with the world and being aware of global events.

Fast forward to now and we are in a situation where not only do we consume content in abundance but share every life event in detail for the world to know, not just friends.

Slice of the pie

Corporations like Google, Facebook, etc. have grown into these data-harvesting firms that exploit every bit of the information we share on the internet for their own gain.

While we ourselves want a share, we are willing to create content that can be monetized to have a slice of the pie.

Sharing vs Spying

The data on the internet that we see is the data we create voluntarily. The conglomerates provide us with a platform on which we can create this content for us to revel in our own geniuses and overall reach.

The flip side of it is that the same platforms track our every movement to the extent that they know our online activity far better than our most trusted adversaries.

Convenience over Personal Data

The more convenient it becomes for us to access and share information, the more vulnerable we become for our information to be readily available for use.

Measures like VPN use, DeGoogling your internet activity, Open Source Initiatives, and Being aware of communication protocols and encryption.

Well-packaged apps and services like DuckDuckGo, Signal, WireGuard, Brave, etc. to name a few make the process much more understandable for everyday users.

Even then, these countermeasures come with a lot of inconveniences and take a user away from the mainstream internet.

To Summarise, this is an uphill battle to reclaim the right for digital privacy. One that a user cannot take it lightly yet we continue to fall for the shiny new tools and devices and pay the cost with our data.

Is Digital Privacy a Myth or a Lost Art?

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