How much of our information is private?

Not much. Not much at all.

In this day and age we spend an enormous amount of our free time scrolling through social media and clicking on links, articles, and quizzes. By doing so, however, we voluntarily hand over a lot of our information. A lot of people don't think about the consequences or even what is happening when they click agree when they get a pop-up asking for access to their Facebook profile, they're just thinking about getting the answer to what Disney princess they are based on their cheese preferences.

Buzzfeed talks about how they accumulate the information but do not directly tie any information to specific people, but even an aggregate of information can be invasive. Plus, even if they only access the information in aggregate form, they still have the information tied to a specific individual in their database. Buzzfeed may actually keep to their word of only doing anonymous aggregate information, but other quiz sites like Meaww that people post to Facebook that you relinquish your Facebook information to have the information they collect directly tied to you.

What's interesting about this dynamic, however, is that most people you ask are completely fine with it. They might say they know they're handing over their information, but they have this mindset of "the internet knows everything about me anyway, what harm will it do". If I'm honest, half the time I feel the same way. I get in this mindset that I'm a good person and I don't do anything that I should worry about if the government sees it.

I think this ties to selective perception in a way, because we choose to ignore what we don't understand or see happening. So, since we aren't seeing the effect these sites have on our information or what they do with them, we don't see the problem and convince ourselves that it's fine. This also proves the impact the media has in certain aspects on us. Particularly, it has an effect on how little we think the media affects us. Most people don't think the media can use their information for anything important or think there is a problem with handing over their Facebook information. Big hacks like the Target credit card problem and Cloudflare leak scare people, but then they don't think about what would happen if a site that they had given their information to was hacked. The media has a way with making articles and wording their terms and conditions in way that seems reasonable, but in actuality they can use your information for a lot.

So, while I think it's important information that our info is not private and to understand that these sites gather this information, most people don't seem to care as much as they should. Rather, I think encouraging media literacy and ensuring people understand WHY it is a problem they are relinquishing their information is the most important aspect of information privacy at the moment.