Terms and Conditions May Apply

While watching this documentary, I couldn’t help but feel unsafe at the fact that my privacy has been and will continue to be violated. When signing up for new social media sites, or downloading specific apps and profiles there are always terms and conditions that individuals have to either “agree” or “disagree” to. Come to think of it, people really don’t take the time to read what is stated in those terms and conditions. Most people will agree to anything if they want what they are signing up for. In addition, terms and conditions are always very lengthily so people usually don’t spend any extra time reading and going over what one is actually agreeing to. This thought is absolutely frightening. Most of us will “agree” to terms and conditions without any knowledge of what we are agreeing to.

It is scary to think that all the information we provide and put out there is forever noted. For example, Instagram is such a huge platform for people of all ages but especially for millennia’s. On the terms and conditions page for Instagram they state that they may display our photos without any compensation to us because once the photos are posted on Instagram, they technically own them. Crazy, right?

When people signed up for Facebook, they also signed a terms and conditions page. The concept is similar to Facebook. Anything one posts on Facebook will then become their information, they own it. For example, if Rebecca posts something online and five years later decides she wants to delete it, of course she can but there’s a catch. Deleting things online only allows that information to be hidden from yourself, but Facebook and the government can go back and track everything you have ever posted from day one.

The privacy policies that we are so-called “agreeing” to puts things into question. I mean they say they are there to protect our privacy but they store all user information in order to create cookies. Or they would gather tons of information based on the various social media sites that an individual utilizes.

Another thing that I thought was really interesting is that the FBI is able to track down those with suspicious activity based off of their keyword searches. If an individual often searches things in relation to inflicting violence on others, or how to create harmful weapons then this person could be hunted down and investigated.

There are so many things on social media platforms and on the Internet that could reveal so much about an individual. After watching this documentary I realized that I should really start paying attention to more of what I agree to online.