Blog: Privacy

New media makes it hard to have privacy and confidentiality. New media gives people access to the public in a way that even threatens privacy. The NYT article "The Wild West of Privacy" by Joe Nocera, points out that our favorite sites like Google and Facebook are using data retrieval tools to find out more about us. These features are scary when you think about. I was recently talking to a coworker and she told me about a crazy experience she had. Her and her husband hadn't been sleeping well for a few nights so they had a discussion the next morning about buying a new mattress. Now, neither of them had used their phones or computers to search for mattresses online but that same day she kept seeing Mattress Firm advertisements on Facebook. She is convinced that her phone was able to pick up on the conversation with her husband about getting a new mattress. How crazy is that? I really do fear the future in terms of hackers being able to access private information through these new retrieval tools.