Gradually, society has evolved due to technical upgradations because they have led us, where we are now. Today we have access to the entire world at our fingertips. These upgradations have undoubtedly provided us a plethora of chances and access to a wealth of knowledge. Phones and laptops are an essential part of our life. In this era, from food shopping to home entertainment, we are doing it all online. Surely, it provides an ease to us, but it comes with certain disadvantages. The fact is, the website we visit are tracking our movements. Companies are aware of our interests – the place we go, the commodity we shop, and so on. Every time we visit these websites, our personal information is being collected by them and might be sold to a third party for some handsome amount. Companies have devised a systematic plan to collect data from us even when we connect to the internet in public places. So, the question of relevance is, is it unethical for them to force people to consent to their data being collected? Or is it bad on our part to know about it and still give go-ahead so that we may keep using these websites?
I would also like to share my own experience of being a victim of cybercrime. Due to some official work, I have tweeted and tagged few banks for asking a favour about some complaint and as I tweeted, just after a couple of minutes, I got a call from a fake bank representative who was asking some OTP and was trying to assure that my complaint will be resolved if I share that OTP. Fortunately, I haven’t shared but if I would have shared then definitely the results were disastrous. Therefore, we should never share our personal details like CVV, PIN, OTP, etc with anyone. And neither should we open/click any link which seems suspicious. Because after clicking on these links/websites any virus can hack our mobiles/laptops which might corrupt all our relevant files and we cannot do anything after it. Different apps and solutions are provided for privacy protection, but they are not sufficient to protect against potential privacy threats. So ideally what should we do is to avoid using absurd websites and before accepting any cookies, we need to be vigilant and aware that what harm it could make and should accept only if it passes the quality check. So, we should always take precautionary steps to avoid these kinds of scams. We are the only ones who can protect ourselves from cybercrimes, just one thing is required i.e., awareness. I want to conclude by saying that technology has both benefits and drawbacks but it is up to the users to determine whether the good outweighs the bad and accordingly decisions should be taken.
