Anonymity: Nobody Ever Really Has It, Especially On Social Media
By Space Coast Daily // April 4, 2018
Difficult to achieve anonymity online
If you’ve ever spent a lot of time online, especially on social media, you’ll know that there is an illusion of anonymity. It’s easy to think that because you’re hiding behind a screen, that you are not going to be tracked down for the things you might say or do.
The problem is, this is 2018, and we’ve come a long way in the past decade. There are so many things modern technology can do that you’re probably not even aware of!
Yes, we have a lot of privacy tools these days, but, despite these, it’s become much more difficult to achieve anonymity online. We might think that just because we have a fake Facebook profile, or we comment on a blog anonymously, that nobody will know it was us. But this is a naïve attitude to take, and you need to wise up to the fact that everything goes somewhere. And once something is online it can be tracked and traced.
One of the big reasons why nobody has any anonymity online anymore is because the government has implemented procedures to access any information online. The principal reason behind this is to monitor and reduce potential terrorist activity.
By reducing anonymity, the government would argue, they are able to improve safety and national security. And, to a degree, this is largely true, but it’s also true that anonymity online matters. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like we are ever going to get that anonymity back anymore.
Another thing to consider is how easy it is to track people down and find out information about individuals. Background check and public records allow us to find out if our new friend from Macy’s has a shady past, or if our new partner is the person we thought they were.
There are so many of these online search options these days, and we can use them to do quick and efficient searches on practically anybody. Bear in mind that this means people are also able to search for information about you as well!
It’s amazing how many people fail to take the necessary steps to protect their anonymity a little better. There are a lot of different ways you need to go about doing this, and you should be very careful. For instance, if you have a webcam on your PC or laptop, this can be used by people externally to spy on you.
That’s why you need to make sure you cover the camera whenever you aren’t using it. This is the sort of thing that is contributing to the lack of anonymity we have in our lives, but there are things we can do about it.
Understanding why we have no anonymity is important for helping us preserve and protect our privacy. If you can work figure out what it is that is compromising your online anonymity it will help you to be a more private person.
As you can imagine, these days there are all sorts of reasons why we suffer from a lack of anonymity online. Some of these are understandable and justifiable, but others are not.
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