What is privacy : A myth or A right ?

What is privacy : A myth or A right ?

Introduction

• Privacy is one's right to be in his own space without being questioned about it whether it's our body privacy, our personal information or any other confidential information which we intend to keep private.

• Everybody has the right to privacy and every government has laws to maintain the privacy of its residents.
  
  

• The right to privacy is included in the constitution of 150 countries.

• The Universal Declaration of Human Rights also includes the Right to privacy in its article 12.

• But how many of us are actually able to maintain that privacy?

Recent issues

• Today sadly about 81% of the population is scared of privacy breaches and cyber-crimes. There are cases of blackmails, fraud calls, identity thefts etc.

• In 2009, 10000 email accounts on Hotmail suffered a privacy breach.

• In 2010 Google got 600 gigabytes of private unsecured data.

• The street view feature of the Google maps has got many complaints about privacy issues.

• A company, Rapleaf sold the private data of a number of users to advertisers!

• Facebook data leak 2018 has been one of the biggest privacy scandals hitting 87 million users!
  
  
  
  
  

• There have been a number of suicide cases because of privacy invasion.

• How is our privacy being affected? Technology here is to be blamed!

• When we make online transactions we have to submit our data. There have been so many cases of frauds in online transactions. The 2016 data reports 15.4 million consumers getting trapped in identity thefts and online frauds.

• We submit our PIN online ie. Personally identifiable number letting people know our locations.

• With social media ruling the world, people share every little information of what are they doing, where are they roaming etc and sitting in our homes we know where are our friends and relatives. Uploading photographs, videos, check- ins etc have hardly kept our lives ‘private’.

• People locate each other on social networking sites. Sometimes they even exchange personal information with strangers and fall into their trap!

• We have cctvs at every second place and we don't even realize most of the times that we are under surveillance.

• So many sites use cookies and people hardly know about such policies.

• The linking of Adhar cards with Sims and account numbers also led to a number of privacy protests. A number of service providers had started getting data because of the same!
  
  

• A large number of cases of Phishing are reported This is using of links taking you to websites that hack your personal information.

• Unsecured emails, unsecured wifi networks, unencrypted links all of these carry risks of privacy breaches.

 

What can we do?

• Do not set up easy passwords. Use a mix of uppercase, lowercase, numbers and special characters. Keep updating your passwords regularly.

• Do not share your card numbers and OTPs on calls. Those are often fraud calls.

• Do not share every little information on your social media accounts. We have to respect our own privacy first!
  

• We should use paid versions for any protection software we make use of.

• Use double factor authentication wherever available and possible.

Conclusion

•  Be cautious of what you share in this informational and technological world. We have to be the guards and watchdogs of our own privacy.

• Know your privacy rights and stand for yourself and your privacy wherever required. ‘Respect your privacy and the privacy of others’.