Privacy Online and Offline

    The privacy we thought we had before watching these videos makes us rethink our whole lives and all of our decisions. The way the companies can collect all of our data, whether it is given or taken, is crazy and unjust. It does not just come from what we share online or on social media, but these companies track our every movement, whether that is online or offline. Knowing that the government and these massive companies can use our data, whether we say yes or no, is very unsettling. These issues are affecting me in my everyday life because now when I go on a website, I know that if I accept anything like cookies, I have given them the keys, and they have all my information and what I do online. My friend was affected by this firsthand when Google sold his information and his business got many fake calls and threatening calls telling him they were going to ruin him. This was not just a regular scam call, they knew all of his information to the tee and made him go offline which lost him thousands of dollars. 

    The government needs to regulate what information these massive companies receive and make it very hard for them to obtain this. If this does not change, then the same problems that are happening now will keep occurring, and it will get even worse for everyday Americans. What we can do to protect ourselves from this problem is not use Google but use other sites like Brave or Firefox. They do not track you and make you accept things all the time, eventually leading to your information getting realsed. Also, it is vital that we make smart decisions on social media and not release our whole private life to the public. This makes this process of stealing and realizing data way easier and could seriously hurt us in the long run.