Invasion of Privacy

The short essay that I choose is Invasion of Privacy, it spoke about the many ways that our private information is becoming less private. There are many ways that people can get ahold of the information that we do not want a stranger to have access to. With the use of so many computers in companies it is not so hard to find the information. It is much easier now than when this was written in 1997. Almost every company uses a computer with internet access to store customer information. Websites are using what you look at to help make your next visit to their web page even better. It made me wonder, is the social life worth the risk?

Writer: Joshua Quittner was the writer of this article. He seems to be in maybe the upper thirties with a family. He wants people to be aware of the privacy issues that we all face when we visit websites and when we use electronic transactions. He is a victim to this behavior, having his phone lines hacked many times. There are many people that have been victims since this time. Joshua really looked at two points he wanted to talk about why limited access to our privacy is necessary and why we shouldn't want them to have any access.

Purpose: This article has many purposes but I think the one that is the most important is beware of hackers. Anyone that shops online, pays bills, checks banking accounts, or anything else that asks for a name or address. Joshua speaks of more ways that websites tack activity on their sites. He says that one site uses "cookies" which they use instead of your name which I am assuming to be the IP address on the computer, making it "safer" by not using personal information. One of the other main points that he points out is that our medical records are the only personal records that aren't protected by law making it easy for employers to get access to them.

Genre: This is an article about the lack of actual privacy that we actually have.

Audience: This is pointed to everyone making them aware of the access that people really have into our lives. Although, I would have to say that it is mostly to parents so that they can teach their children the importance of not giving out information over the computer. Kind of like the saying "don't take candy from a stranger".

This article is more about letting us know where technology is heading and where our privacy is going to be challenging. We need to monitor the way we use the internet and the things that we post on the internet. I mean is letting our friends on Facebook know that we are out of town for a few weeks' worth the risk of having someone break in to our homes, is posting out phone number on there so that we can reconnect with old class mates worth someone looking it up and finding out where in fact we do live?