How Email and Tech Companies Are Becoming Deceitful

As an additional blog post, I decided to write about two of the Ted Talks on privacy and elaborate on how privacy is slowly turning from a fundamental right to a form of corruption.

Image retrieved from ElTek.

In the Ted Talk "Think Your Email's Private? Think Again" by Andy Yen, he elaborates on how our email is not as private as we think it is. When someone sends an email to another person, it is assumed that the recipient of that email is the only one who can read it. However, an email can go through an Internet provider, the government, and an email provider before it is even read by the recipient. At that point, an email is not even a private message anymore. A way to stop this issue is by encrypting messages before the email gets to the server. With this kind of technological advancement, the idea of privacy does not have to be corrupt and it can actually become more accessible to users. I think Yen's ideas behind creating a new and private Internet are brilliant because everyone should want to live in a world where their content is for their eyes only and not for the government to see.

In Finn Lützow Holm Myrstad's Ted Talk entitled, "How Tech Companies Deceive You Into Giving Up Your Data and Privacy," he discusses the issue of privacy with a kid's doll called "Cayla." This doll has the capability of being hacked into by unnamed third party users, can record your child's every word, and can track locations and data with anyone with a smartphone within it's radius. Myrstad and his colleagues recognized that this was a severe privacy issue and helped shut down the sales of this doll in stores. Another issue that Myrstad and his colleagues tackled was the lengthiness of the terms and conditions listed before downloading apps on your cell phone. He makes a point that these terms and conditions should be shortened and simplified so that people would be more likely to read them and understand them when downloading apps on their phones. I agree with the statements he made regarding how technology can only get better if tech companies start to respect people's right of privacy.

As an avid technology and social media user, it is frightening to learn about all of the flaws related to privacy within the devices, their terms and conditions, and the way they are processed through the Internet. After watching these two videos, I know I am going to be even more cautious than before about what kinds of devices I purchase, what I'm allowing these devices to do, and how my information will be publicized online.


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