Blog Post #1 February 20, 2020
The suggestions that are offered to me on this episode in order to protect my privacy are for one to read all the agreements on any app or website because I don’t know if companies are selling my information. Every time I update my phone I accept to its terms and conditions, but I don’t read what it says, little do I know Apple may be selling my credit card information, photos, web history to big companies that can benefit from it.
I have my location services on multiple apps which can lead to me getting stalked and worse comes to worse it might become the cause of my death or identity theft. Like Shabelle stated, Google is the leader of surveillance capitalism because we use it to search anything anywhere and at any time. Google used this to their advantage so they can predict our next move. They used our data as a product to sell to big companies, so they set specific ads to each person. I have seen this multiple time on platforms such as Instagram. I have googled a certain product for example blush and I go to Instagram and I see multiple ads on the blush I just finished googling.
After looking at my privacy settings I was shocked to notice that my photo app takes information from multiple apps such as canvas, Snapchat, and my Discover credit card app. Once I went to apps that request for speech recognition, I was the most shocked to notice that my Ulta beauty app was on there, which can help explain why I have been getting more Ulta beauty ads since I downloaded the app.
I went to location services and I saw more apps than expected. I found my camera app, Chic-fil-a, my bank app, fire TV, Starbucks, Target, Instagram, and Twitter.
After exploring a little with my privacy settings, I noticed an advertising tab which gave me the option to limit Ad tracking. This claims to opting out of receiving ads that are targeted to my interests but states I may still receive the same number of ads but will be less relevant to me. I turned it on but I’m pretty sure it isn’t going to do much.
Blog Post #2 March 12, 2020
This book has impacted me drastically on the way I view technology. I had no idea we relied so much on it and how it has negatively impacted our lives without us even knowing it. Algorithms have been made so the rich can profit from the poor and the rich get richer simply because they have to power to do so. For example, the author brought to light how you either had to know someone on the inside or be part of a certain class or look a certain way in order to get a loan. Even then depending on your social status would determine how high your interest rates would be.
Another example of how rigged society is due to technology and the algorithms people have made are credit scores. If someone with a bad credit score would apply to a job, they wouldn’t get the job because employers had access to that information and employers out automatically drop their application. How could someone with bad credit be able to pay back their loans without a job? This just doesn’t make sense to me and opened my eyes because when I applied to many jobs right out of high school, I of course didn’t have any credit, and it got me questioning if that was the reason why I never got a call back.
A huge one that really hit close to home since I do plan on becoming an elementary teacher is when teachers would get fired for not having high state test scores. Of course, the algorithm of this equation did not care if one as an educator was missing days due to personal reasons or the student’s life. Maybe the student was going through personal problems that effected their work in the school setting. It also didn’t recognize students with disabilities were taking the same exam and students that just arrived from another country were expected to exceed while not knowing the language.
The last chapters focused how much our phones and other electronic devices control and spy on our lives without even knowing it. I had a slap in the face when I checked my settings to see which apps had access to my location. I was surprised to see how many apps that access and I had wasn’t aware of it. I also started paying attention to how my phone knows my daily routine. The moment I turn on my car it tells me how far away I am from work or school. It also marks down where I parked my car. I was so surprised to see how far technology has gone.
Overall this book was very interesting because it brought to light how technology is predicting our life and categorizing us. It is predicting wither we are going to be successful or not, if we are reliable and making us work for them when it should be vise versa.
Karen's Educational Blog 