Privacy and anonymity are currently hot topics on the internet and beyond. Both individuals and organizations are looking for ways to protect themselves online. It doesn’t just mean protecting your information from being stolen or your accounts from being hacked. In some cases, it means raising user awareness, such as the differences between privacy, anonymity, and security.
Privacy is about doing things online without anyone tracking you, analyzing your behavior, or spamming you with ads. In other words, everyone should have the right to privacy online, right? The situation isn’t that good, even though many advocates try to change the conversation.
There are various regulations concerning personal data, its usage, and privacy, but many organizations still abuse these things. One of the reasons is the existence of privacy guidelines in their current form.
Notices are designed to be unnoticed
Lots of notices and policies are misleading. Privacy notices should be designed to inform customers what a particular organization does with their data. However, in many cases, they don’t do this. More frequently than not, many notices related to users’ data are categorized as dark patterns.
Customers online think that privacy notices inform them that a site or app will not use, share, or store their information. Nevertheless, millions skip through these notices, clicking agree without ever learning the real situation.
In many cases, these notices are mandatory if people want to use websites or apps. So, when users do accept them, they actually allow the site to send them ads and track their behavior online. In other words, privacy notices aren’t actually what they are supposed to be. They are a tool for companies to give legitimacy to their data-processing actions.
They are too long and difficult to read
Another popular tactic employed by organizations, lawyers, and experts is to create privacy policies and notices that are too difficult to comprehend. In other words, these documents are filled with technical information and complex language that no one can read.
But aside from this, they are too long and extensive. Organizations understand that modern consumers have short attention spans and don’t have the patience to decipher long texts. Even if they were simple to read, most people wouldn’t want to waste so much time.
As a result, many people don’t read privacy policies or notices. Instead, they simply accept them without knowing how it can hurt them. They don’t know what they are accepting and how their data is being used. But at the same time, they would want to prevent tracking and improve their privacy.
We aren’t keeping up with the digital world
Since companies make a conscious effort to make a privacy notice that people won’t read and simply accept, isn’t there another way to deal with the issue? Most people would argue that regulative and law-making institutions should set mechanisms to help people protect their privacy.
Unfortunately, this is not the case, and there is no indication that this will happen in recent times. In the digital world, all the privacy legislation is reactive. This means that authorities won’t do anything until there is widespread recognition of a problem.
But as we all know really well, it can be challenging for people to reach a consensus about online issues. Not only this, but most people aren’t aware of what is happening in the background as they are using the web.
On top of that, lawmakers and authorities don’t understand how digital companies use data-processing capabilities and how they operate. Thus, it becomes difficult to regulate their behavior.
What can be done?
Since the companies aren’t willing to change their ways and the lawmakers don’t know how to protect people’s privacy online, what can users do? We can wait and hope to see a shift in the narrative as there are already companies that emphasize better data-processing methods.
However, this isn’t likely to happen globally anytime soon. On top of that, it would take decades to create a foolproof environment where data abuse won’t be an issue. It is why users themselves need to get educated and do whatever they can to protect their privacy.
People are already taking action. In some cases, they read all terms and conditions to ensure that they know everything necessary. Others might turn to tools like Atlas VPN as means of protecting their data online. What does it do? It encrypts entire web traffic, hides IP addresses, and bolsters privacy and anonymity online.
Additionally, people might change their behavior. For instance, they might drop Facebook or other platforms that trigger some red flags.
Conclusion
Digital technologies and the internet have developed so much in the past couple of decades. But we weren’t able to follow up on this development with appropriate mechanisms and regulations.
Since we are doing more things online each day, it has become imperative to protect privacy. This includes changing the existing guidelines and turning them into something much safer and practical.
