Who’s watching?

Imagine this: Standing in a room full of the representatives of your favourite brand and shouting out the country you live in, your native language, the pair of shoes you’ve been eyeing all week long.

Well, I’ve been doing this all this time. Just behind my laptop.

User privacy and data protection are buzz words that are not new but definitely were things I took for granted. They were like Terms & Conditions pages where I simply accepted and acknowledged their existence without caring about their consequences.

At least up till now.

When I heard about the Cambridge Analytica scandal, I felt a whirlwind of emotions, mostly paranoia. Because if this can happen to anyone what’s to say I am not a victim of it? This was not the first data breach of course but definitely one of the biggest cases thus far.

Last September, the outbreak of the breach affected about 50 million accounts. Furthermore, how the data was collected scared me. By utilising the “friends of friends” approach, they got their hands on massive amounts of information. With only 53 users using the “This is Your Digital Life” quiz, they could access over 310,000 accounts. Thinking about how many silly quizzes I’ve completed fills me with fear on the amount of data I’ve subconsciously been sharing. This is starting to sound like Black Mirror episode coming to life.

As an avid user of social media, I am fully exposed to these risks. And probably, I believe many of you as well. In fact, I believe it is nigh on impossible to leave no social media trace especially in this digital age.

What matters more is what can we do to protect ourselves.

Well, the most obvious choice could also be the most challenging one. Limit the amount you post on social media. The more frequently you post, the more data you’re sharing online and we all know a deleted post is never really truly removed from cyberspace. This would mean not posting pictures of your every meal, group outing and that hilarious video of your friend. Tough, I know.

The next line of defence would be your friends. Remember the feeling when your friends upload an “unglam picture” of you because you were not camera-ready or your hair was a total mess? This is kind of similar. A study conducted found that they were able to filter out a person’s profile simply based on tweets from 8-9 friend accounts. So get your squad on board and have each other’s backs

Even the founder of Wikipedia, Dr Larry Sanger has called for a social media strike that will last from July 4 to July 5. He hopes that the strike will help change how data is being controlled and make networks more open. He has also drafted the Declaration of Digital Independence. This asks for social networks to become decentralised and systems that will respect the rights of free speech, privacy and security.

Sanger’s suggestion is probably a start. If you are keen to join in the movement, you can use #SocialMediaStrike to share and announce and spread the word to your family and friends. It may sound ironic but it will be a great way to raise awareness on this movement and perhaps tech corporations like Facebook and Google will take these issues more seriously.

For me, I’ve decided to join in this strike and may even impose it more frequently for social media cleanse. This way, I won’t be feeding much data to these tech giants and probably be sleeping a little earlier.

Win-win situation.