15 Dec Think twice before uploading it
(Pic: The earth shielded by data and algorithms. Credit: TheDigitalArtist
Meet Jeff Taylor. Jeff is an artist and a writer based in Charlotte, North Carolina for LGBTQ Nation and QNotes. Not too long ago Jeff was contacted by Experian just to learn that his personal details have been compromised during the scandalous Experian leak of sensitive data.
Of course, as anyone else immediately after that he started looking for a solution to prevent future data breaches. “I signed up for Lifelock immediately, before realizing that it’s mostly useless. It’s really just going to tell you after the fact that something has happened”, says Jeff. So, he just moved on with his life until he received another letter, this time from Uber. “I started the application before realizing my car is too old and sh***y to meet the requirements.”, said Mr Taylor.
“So it’s a pretty good representation of just how incompetent and corrupt corporations can be if you let them through lax or nonexistent regulations.”, commented Jeff.
Jeff is just one of the millions of people worldwide who have been stunned, and had their personal data leaked by corporations as Equifax, Uber and Experian in recent years. Just two months ago Equifax revealed that about 145 million Americans and 400,000 Britons had their personal data compromised during the intrusion at the end of July this year.
The Uber scandal, however was far more outrageous and wicked. Uber not only breached the sensitive data of 57 million customers and drivers in October, 2016 but they also paid $100,000 to the hackers to delete the data and keep it quite.
Daniel van Strien, Research Data Support Officer at London’s Global University explains more about how innocently your data is being collected: “Often your data would be collected because you are trying to use a particular service. So, in theory you could avoid having your data collected by not using these services but, for example, if you want to sign up with a bank or get a credit card then in the process of doing that you would need to agree for them to do a credit check and kind of access your personal data.
“For private organisations often that data is valuable to them because they can sell advertising or help target particular things for certain people. “
Diego Naranjo, Senior Policy Advisor for Edri.org gives an overview of the consequences: “When all this data which is being gathered from them (people) is converting into this massive databases, what we call big data, they (corporations and governments) create a new data out of this data, and use it for profiling which could create a lot of potential damages.”
So, is there any way at all to protect our personal data?
Well, there is General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) which will come into effect in May, 2018 and among other things will allow users to withdraw their consent at any time.
There is also OpenPGP, an email-encryption software which will encrypt the content of the email but the details as sender and receiver would still be tracked by your email provider.
Using Firefox browser could limit the collection of your personal data but if you use Google search your searches will still be tracked and gathered. Alternative option could be DuckDuckGo. For day-to-day messaging Signal will encrypt your messages before sending and whoever receives it after that their phone will decrypt it.
Radio Package EU and UK rights aired on November 8, 2017
The radio package was focused on the students’ opinion on the recent news of EU citizens rights in the UK citizens rights in the EU after Brexit. It includes Intro and Outro voiceovered by Ralitsa Arabadzhieva and two vox pops cooperatively done with Moona Popal.
VT package on Oxford street Christmas lights 2017 aired on November 9, 2017
This VT package covered the annual switching on of the iconic Christamas lights on Oxford str in London. It consists of an intro and outro made by the reporter Ralitsa Arabadzhieva, four vox pops and plenty of beautifully shot GV’s by Fransisca Silva.
