Privacy Terms

We are not aware of how much of our information is actually public and how much our audience is bigger than intended. Every work that we write and every photo that we post or are tagged in is much more public than we know. The worst part about this is that without knowing we agree to this.

Whether it is a smartphone app or an account online every once in a while when we have to sign up we are asked if we agree to the terms and conditions. Clicking on “Read the Terms and Conditions” opens up another window with the content that would take about one our to read. At some point I decided to read through this form while downloading an app for my phone.
Without knowing we agree to share many of our personal information. Some apps access contacts and images. While trying to keep our posts private we post thinking that the audience of our posts are our Facebook friends. This audience rather extends to everyone who can see profiles of our friends and friends are allowed to share posts, which then become more public. The size of the audience can not be controlled. 

Some Facebook apps access all the information we have on Facebook except for our messages.

After signing up for a Facebook account we agree to give them license to our content. They can use our photos in any way even after the account has been deactivated.  Using any of the apps for personalization, like Genius for Mac products, we agree to share not only our music library but our information in order to get personalized results. This is a good way of tracking IP addresses to people, which can give the current location of a user. It acts as a tracking device.

In other cases like online shopping this could cause some additional fees that are only mentioned in the terms of use. One example is paying for the return shipment of articles that don’t fit. Often these fees can be high and sometimes it is cheaper to buy the new items than to pay for the return shipment of the current ones.

The language used in these can be very vague and even after reading it we might not realize what it says. Some companies have decided to help their users by stating more directly what each condition means under each paragraph. For example, under Eligibility under Use of the Services section, they say that “you have to be at least 13 years old to use Tumblr. We're serious: it's a hard rule, based on U.S. federal and state legislation, even if you're 12.9 years old. If you're younger than 13, don't use Tumblr. Ask your parents for an Xbox or try books.”

For some people the issue of privacy is not that important ,but knowing who is licensed to our information can prevent it from being used against us. Knowing that every letter we entered online is being saved makes me question internet privacy and if there is anything that we can keep personal.