What is digital privacy and why its important

Andriy Kusyy
4 min readJun 6, 2021

Each day world and humanity experience an area of digital transformation. This can be compared to the metamorphosis of a butterfly. We need to adapt quickly, combining traditional and digital methods.

Credit: https://www.apa.org/monitor/2020/01/cover-trends-protect-privacy

Each of us is constantly connected to the Internet, and the impact of digital technology on our interaction with the outside world is becoming increasingly significant. Our lives depend on computers, which control workflows, control and make decisions in many areas of our business. We can instantly find answers to the questions we are interested in, we can communicate with anyone at will, at any time and from anywhere on the planet. But all these achievements have a downside. In today’s world, where devices are connected to a common network, it has become much easier for attackers to find vulnerabilities and invade. We are all potential targets, which is why we need to acquire cybersecurity skills to protect ourselves, our families and the information environment of our civic projects.

Information and timely access to it provide undoubted competitive advantages. The value of your business is determined by the usefulness of the information you process, transmit and store, which is why it is so important to be able to protect it. Every day we face new threats, we are exposed to more ingenious attacks that change the picture of the risks of your field of activity.

Credit: https://www.behance.net/gallery/64510045/Social-Media-Privacy

Most of us don`t even know that information we leave on our social pages are constantly stored and logged. A computer’s Internet Protocol (IP) address can be traced back to a specific user and, as such, his website viewing habits can be monitored. [1]
Last year had a number of cases that highlight the growing tension between AI’s thirst for and use of huge amounts of personal data to train ML algorithms and personal data’s status cases.
Probably most Internet users have used Canvas at least once in their lives to visualize their projects, business information or cases. In May 2019, an Australian website was attacked. As a result, the email addresses, usernames and passwords of 137 million users of this platform were removed. Canvа employees later reassured that the hareks were able to review the information but not remove the partial credit card and payment details.

Credit: https://10alert.com/canva-suffers-data-breach-affecting-139-million-users/

The suspect contacted ZDNet to brag about the incident, saying Canva had detected their attack and shut down its data breach server.
The company confirmed the incident and later notified users, prompting them to change their passwords and reset OAuth tokens. However, according to a later Canva post, a list of approximately 4 million Canva accounts containing stolen user passwords was later decrypted and distributed on the Internet, resulting in the company invalidating unchanged passwords and notifying users of unencrypted passwords in the list.

No doubts for us today that commercial enterprises, political campaigns and governments gather individuals’ personal data and use descriptive, diagnostic, predictive and prescriptive analytics to determine past and future patterns.

Credit: https://giphy.com/search/privacy

Common for most Instagram users situation is when you come across the advertising of the jeans or sunglasses after a minute of discussing it with friends or family but never googled them. Instagram head, Adam Mosseri in his interview said that Instagram didn’t listen to users’ private conversations. [3]
The use of social networks for organizational purposes for the dissemination of information as a means of mass communication. There is a concept of “Twitter — revolution”. A clear example is the events in North Africa, the Middle East, which have led to riots, government resignations and political change

Credit: https://www.mdgadvertising.com/marketing-insights/infographics/the-sad-state-of-social-media-privacy-infographic/

In the globe, we have many laws and initiatives that aim to make digital privacy a basic right of human being, but it still needs to be more appropriate to the time and technology development, especially now that so many devices are connected to the internet and require personal data to operate. [4] The Pew Research Center found that while most Americans want control over their personal data, only 9 per cent believe they actually have it.
Consequently, this doesn`t mean that you don`t have any level of privacy. The National Cyber Security Alliance recommends that users take as much control of their online presence as possible by being thoughtful before posting and adjusting privacy settings to a level that you’re comfortable with. [5]

Credit:https://giphy.com/search/privacy

So in the data-driven age, digital privacy is one of the importest. Although it is challenging to predict exactly how collected data will be used, it’s important to think proactively about how best to secure personal data. Even with a number of laws and guarantees you need to post and leave that amount of information about yourself that you are ready to share with others.

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