technoculture203-09

So after last week's lecture I found myself quite paranoid and unwilling to go on sites that I usually went on in fear of being 'watched'. Now, I've known about internet surveillance for awhile but I did not know about the extent of it until quite recently. This made me think about a point in the lecture on how internet users can be considered either ignorant of the privacy issues on the web or that they simply accept it. I wondered which category I fit in. Certainly I knew about trackers like cookies and spyware, but I did not know on what sites you could be exposed to them. Originally I believed it was only on the more seedier sites that they existed and so I tended to avoid those. Eventually I found out (from an episode of 'Boston Legal') that most sites have cookies that track your progress in cyberspace, this however did not detour my use of the net, I simply took certain measures to lessen the extent of surveillance on my computer by deleting the cookies and temporary internet files. I have no idea if this has any effect whatsoever but it does make me feel slightly more secure.

So am I ignorant to the privacy issues or am I just trading off privacy for convinient social contact? I think a bit of both. I know it exists but I'm blissfully unaware of how it properly opperates. If we all had sufficient knowledge of how and where we are being tracked perhaps we would all be more careful with what we put up on the net? http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/03/wireds-top-inte/ This site addresses what the author(s) believe are the top threats on the net dealing with privacy and censorship. It identifies ways in which hackers and governments can keep track of people.

The internet is one of the most convinient tools to keep in contact with people, and while being spied upon is not a good thing, as long as you do not do anything particularly illegal you should have nothing to worry about, but still the idea of being watched is disconcerting as we have no idea as to who could be watching.