TED Talks are fantastic ways to learn about both the good and the bad of the world we live in. Today I learned about some of the very bad. From local police forces collecting data on how we move around to learning that advertising is a 137 BILLION dollar market, the TED Talks I watched showed a massive amount of data being used improperly or for extra use besides its' original intent.
I know that most companies are listening in and using my data when they are not supposed to but the reason I have not been very concerned about it is simply: "What can I do about it?" I know about VPN's and the extreme benefit they have on creating encryptions between you and a site, but I don't have the funds to be able to purchase a monthly plan for a VPN to protect my data. This is unfortunate as I wish to encrypt all of my data but am unable to due to the lack of income while in college. With data records and accounts being stolen at a rate of more than 1 billion per year, it seems like a critical thing to invest in.
I did a google search on myself to see what would come up and I will say my findings are some of what I expected and some of what I did not. The first thing that popped up was a photo of me on my mission trip to Nicaragua which in my opinion is a LOT better of a first photo to appear than probably most young adults' instagrams have on them. The next were miscellaneous other "Thomas Burfield"s or those with the last name Burfield but then my Hudl account profile picture appeared which was just me in a football helmet but it was still surprising nonetheless as that account has been inactive for a VERY long time. The next photo is of a project I did for school I titled "The Baller Life" after that is my Linkedin account and the very bottom middle is a picture of my mom... not sure how she made it on my google search but hey! Still important to point out. One thing to note is that I have a facebook but I never go on it but I still find it interesting facebook out of all things, did not appear in the search.
I know that most companies are listening in and using my data when they are not supposed to but the reason I have not been very concerned about it is simply: "What can I do about it?" I know about VPN's and the extreme benefit they have on creating encryptions between you and a site, but I don't have the funds to be able to purchase a monthly plan for a VPN to protect my data. This is unfortunate as I wish to encrypt all of my data but am unable to due to the lack of income while in college. With data records and accounts being stolen at a rate of more than 1 billion per year, it seems like a critical thing to invest in.
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| results for "thomas burfield" in google |
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