Why Does Internet Privacy Matter?

Just like the five billion users of the internet globally, many in the United States also take advantage of the internet. This article tries to deliver an important message to internet users in this country: no matter you are a subscriber to Xfinity internet deals or those of any other internet service provider, data privacy should matter to you. Here are some reasons why:

Classified Financial Information

How many times have you heard of people’s money getting stolen from their bank accounts after they made a transaction on their credit card through the internet? The truth be told; your dad is right when he says that you should be careful about putting your financial information on the internet. Day in and day out, many cases pop up of money theft using the internet. How does it work? Well, hackers intrude into the devices that you are using the internet on and pry for the most sensitive financial data. Then, they either use the data against you themselves or sell the data to someone who does.

Jobs

No one needs to know what your messages to your loved ones are. Simply speaking, you should hide all kinds of private information about you from current and/or potential employers. Yes, they may not condemn all of your habits but there is a good chance that one of these habits may cause them to judge you so why take the risk? Notably, when information is leaked to companies who have hired or are currently in the process of hiring you, it carries through the chain of command up to your bosses. So, if you use the internet to trash talk your bosses, you are better off caring a lot about your data privacy.

In the case that you think that employers will not make the effort to know more about you, trust us, they do. Any additional information is gold for them because they are making a huge decision when they choose to hire someone over others. This decision has the potential to cost them tens of thousands of dollars!

Business Secrets

Do you know who else is dying to hack into your internet? Your company’s competitors. They are always looking for an opportunity to get more information about the future business strategy and marketing plan of their competitor – your company. If you are a business owner or an executive, you should be extra careful about ensuring data privacy as your internet-connected devices hold key company information such as balance sheets, business ideas, and other company secrets. If you are an employee, know that it is still smart to be very vigilant about protecting your data as your company will appreciate you taking the front seat in ensuring that no sensitive data about it is leaked.

For a second, let us delve into what will happen if your company does not care about data privacy. The star employee your company was going to hire will be hired, at the last minute, by your organization’s competitor. All the preparations you were doing to hype up the spring discounts you were about to offer on your products will be disclosed to the competitor also. Guess what the competitor will do now? They will, for sure, offer similar kinds of discounts before stealing all the attention from you!

State Secrets

Get out of the shoes of a person in the corporate world and put yourselves in the shoes of a government servant. Your primary responsibility is to protect the interests of your nation. This is why you need to make sure that no sensitive information that you are trusted with gets in the hands of your company’s enemies. Imagine if you are the President of the United States of America and Vladimir Putin – the head of state of our country’s greatest rival, Russia – finds a way to hack into your email and find out how much you are going to spend on defense the following year! Even on a smaller scale, officers are always entrusted with secretive information that, once leaked, can cause great harm to the interests of the people you are there to serve.

Family

In many countries, families will heavily judge you for using the internet in a certain way, such as watching pornography or ordering alcohol on the net. Even if you do these kinds of things, do you want people to know? Thus, even if your employer does not know anything secretive about you and your bank account information is secure, it is still wise to be very cautious about internet privacy.

Wrapping Up

We hope this article has helped you realize how important it is for you to ensure internet privacy. Besides the steps you can take yourself, internet service providers also help you with data privacy. If you are a Comcast customer, you can call the Comcast customer service line and ask them how they can help you. If you are subscribed to another service provider, act accordingly.

(Devdiscourse's journalists were not involved in the production of this article. The facts and opinions appearing in the article do not reflect the views of Devdiscourse and Devdiscourse does not claim any responsibility for the same.)