Terms and Conditions

Our survey results support the claim that a majority of internet users do not read terms and conditions. A common belief is that if a service or website has terms & conditions it is credible. This is false. Terms & conditions may include provisions that you disagree with or that violate your privacy. Without reading them it is impossible to know what you have agreed to.

This image displays just the introduction of the terms and conditions of The Guardian's web site. There's many more pages where that came from.

Picture courtesy of The Guardian

VPNs

VPNs are Virtual Private Networks. Using a VPN is a a way to add an extra layer of privacy to your activity on the internet, especially when using public WiFi networks, which are particulary vulnerable to hackers. VPNs encrypt your data and make it harder for a hacker to access your sensitive information by routing all your activity through a separate server.

Picture courtesy of Petter Lagson on Unsplash

Corporations

Companies like Facebook, Google, and Twitter recieve tens of thousands of requests per year from U.S. law enforcement agencies. These companies have control over how easy or difficult they make it for law enforcement to get information. For example, after 9/11, AT&T went above and beyond the information they were required to give the NSA by creating a program to give them as much information on the internet as possible. On the other hand, after information about NSA surveillance was revealed by Edward Snowden many companies have resisted warrants requesting information from the U.S. Government.

Picture courtesy of the official AT&T website

Private contractors are integral to the way internet surveillance is carried out. These contractors are private for-profit companies that work with and for government agencies. Through outsourcing private contractors doing the dirty work for federal agencies. A fifth of full-time staff at government agancies are private contractors. This means less oversight and focus on accountability. The number one goal for private contractirs is profit. They are beholden to stockholders first, not the American people.

The Technology Behind Surveillance

Surveillance can be done on the internet by collecting metadata, logs of phone calls, text messages, social media data, and other private information. Additionally, monitoring is also carried out using facial recognition cameras and aerial surveillance.

5G was supposed to make it more difficult for hackers to get information but it may still be vulnerable to certain attacks. Stingrays or ”IMSI catchers” can trick a device into thinking they are real cell towers and then track the device or listen to phone calls. 5G was supposed to make these attacks impossible. Devices are rated 1 to 12 on complexity. Only devices with higher numbers can connect to 4G/5G. Stingrays are able to change this number and downgrade devices so they cannot connect to 5G where more protections are in place, making information easier to steal.

But we haven't answered probably the most pressing question you have: how did the NSA domestic spying program work? Although much of the technical information remains classified, we can piece together some clues from the work of whistleblowers, and government officials, and journalistic investigations, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The details of every American's call history didn't take much "hacking" to obtain: they merely collaborated with private telecommunications companies, which handed over "call-detail records" of their customers. These same companies also allowed the NSA to install surveillance equipment in secret rooms at these facilities, allowing the NSA to listen to any communication they wanted in real-time. The equipment that made this surveillance possible were called fiber-optic splitters, which make duplicates of the data that pass through them. On a larger scale, machines such as the "Narus Semantic Traffic Analyzer" could conduct deep packet inspection, again duplicating the information transmitted through the network and forward that information to the NSA.

Picture courtesy of Hackaday

Why protect it in the first place?

We hope that reading our webpage up until now has convinced you how important it is to take the steps you can to protect your privacy on the internet (even though most of those who took our survey said they don't take any steps). An article published by The Chronicle of Higher Education titled "Why Privacy Matters Even if You Have 'Nothing to Hide'" provides some compelling reasons. People often fall back on the mantra "if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear" when faced with the reality of government surveillance. One humorous response: "If you have nothing to hide, then that quite literally means you are willing to let me photograph you naked? And I get full rights to that photograph, so I can show it to your neighbors?" It's true that the concept of "privacy" is difficult to define, but problems can quickly arise when the government collects too much personal data: George Orwell's 1984 is a notable example. Privacy isn't inherently linked with hiding "bad" things: people have a right to privacy. One day, someone could hack into a government's surver (well, it's already happened, with disastrous effects) and use that personal data against you. And who's to say we should trust the U.S. government with our data in the first place? People of color in America are already feeling the negative effects of being incorrectly/unfairly targeted by the government. When outside parties attempt to piece together the data they have collected, they often paint disorted pictures that reflect their own biases. Clearly, we must hold the U.S. government accountable for its blatant violations of the basic right to privacy. And when that doesn't work, we as users should take matters into our own hands to protect our privacy.

Concrete Steps Toward Privacy

Information from Norton, Consumer Reports, and Tech News World contributed to this list of tips.

• Use a VPN when in public spaces (and NEVER use public WiFi).
• Don't overshare on social media.
• Browse in incognito and use DuckDuckGo as your search engine.
• Check your data breach status on this website.
• Please, use different passwords for each website, and make sure those passwords aren't easy to guess.
• Enable two-factor authentication on your accounts.
• Go to the settings of every program/device you use to ensure the maximum security and privacy settings are enabled.
• Encrypt your data regularly.
• Turn off GPS tracking on your phone.
• Make sure every browser is HTTPS.
• Never give up secure data over the internet unless it really is a trusted website.
• Beware of Internet Service Providers (ISPs): most monitor your online data. This can be circumvented by getting a VPN.
• Clear your cookies regularly, and make sure websites collect as few as possible.

Even if you take all of these measures, you still won't be totally protected. Why is that? Online technologies are so ubiquitous that their breaching is inevitable. Furthermore, the government doesn't seem like they're going to stop watching us anytime soon. But don't lose hope: if we mobilize and push for reform in politics and security, we can get closer to a secure, private online world.