(12/7/17  Jingheng Wang)

Online Privacy: Are we safe? What can we do?

The Internet changed our lives. Through the Internet, people can reach information worldwide. We use Facebook. We tweet. We watch YouTube. The Internet fulfilled our demand for spiritual life. However, when we are enjoying the benefits from the Internet, our privacy is not safe anymore. Our personal information leaks to individuals, groups, companies, and the government, but we are not aware. Nevertheless, what we gain in return, including recommendations and protection, are much valuable than what we lost.

Recently, I chatted online with my friend, Lan. She told me an interesting thing, that one day, a senior of her whom she never met before sent a request of being friends to her chatting account. Lan is quite curious about how her senior had her chatting account ID, but the senior did not tell her. Several hours later, one of Lan’s classmates asked her “What do you think of that guy?” — which reveals that it was her classmate that leaked her ID to the senior. According to Lan’s words, she is quite irritated, as the classmate leaks her personal information, more specifically, a kind of online privacy to people unknown, without her permission. I suggested her to block the senior if she does not want to keep in touch with him.

Lan’s story is not a single case of privacy leaking. In our daily life, we are interrupted by spam mails, telephone promotions, and even fraud and phishing. When people purchase goods on Amazon or eBay, people have to provide their address and cell phone numbers to the sellers for the postal services. Of course, most sellers help their customers to keep their privacy. However, there are cases that sellers illegally selling customers’ personal information to promotion companies.1 These outlaws sell information including customers’ names, cell phone numbers, email addresses, and occupations. The promotion companies then send spam mails and texts according to the list. Finally, we receive these messages and get nagged. All these cases and evidence reveal one fact, that we are not safe anymore online.

Online privacy not only includes our personal information but also our actions on the Internet, including the web pages we visit, the music we listen to, and the words we post. It sounds horrible, but our actions are being monitored every second by the government. The whole Internet world is a non-privacy world. The situation is just like or even go beyond what George Orwell described in his anti-utopia book “1984”. “Big Brother is watching you” (Orwell 3). The Internet services providers and governments are monitoring the public opinion moment by moment.

The case is very special in China.2 The company running the biggest search engine developed originally by China, Baidu Inc., provides many services rather than a simple search engine. Among all the services, the most famous and commonly used one must be “Tieba”. Tieba, formally translated as “Post Bar”, is a communication platform with more than 8 million sections all created by Chinese netizens. Each section has a main topic. Baidu users can discuss a specific topic with other users who have the same interest. With so many sections and users, Baidu cannot manage them manually. As a solution, Baidu introduced the blocking system named “Automatic Spam Deleting System”, commonly known as “the filter”, to delete the spam messages and illegal messages automatically by computer programs. The filter deletes those messages posted that have some sensitive words. To determine which word is sensitive, Baidu built a huge database saving the words that is whether illegal or not suitable to be appeared online. If the filter found someone’s message contain one of the sensitive words, the system automatically delete this message and report this situation to the staffs for further investigations, which may result in banning the account. Serious situations will be provided to the government.

Not only the Internet services providers but also the government is monitoring. The recent news reveals the Chinese government did interfere people’s words, which is about Yuzhang Academy, a notorious, illegal place to treat teenagers’ Internet addiction. Although China made great progress in compulsory education in the last 30 years, which did improved the cultural level of the youth, many middle-aged people in their 40s and 50s still remain an elementary education level. Most of them have their children, teenagers healthy and strong. It is quite unfortunate to these teenagers that they are living in a digital world. Many teenagers, especially from rural areas, get addicted to the Internet. Parents of these teenagers who have low education level have no idea of them, considering they might get sick, so they sent them to this special “school” to cure their Internet addiction. Unexpectedly, this “school” use many illegal ways to torture these teens, including but not limited to confinement, physical punishment, and sexual abuse. Students are afraid of their “tutors”, they can only behave cautiously to prevent from punishments. Several months later, when the parents see their children do not like playing games anymore, they even appreciate for the “tutors” education. After the students escaped from the purgatory, they tried calling for police, but there are some government officials being protective umbrellas of Yuzhang Academy: they tracked who posted these information and students were caught by the “tutors” again. Fortunately, the existence of Yuzhang Academy was revealed by a personal-media, which caused an uproar on the Internet. The reactions from the “umbrellas” were quick, that they banned all the accounts and television programs about it, even asked some parents to vindicate the academy.3 However, in waves of great effort from Chinese netizens, the academy was suspended and was under further investigations. People’s Daily comment it as “the resurrection of Yang Yongxin’s treatment center”, which used electric shock therapy to “cure” Internet addiction (Jie). Although the academy was finally suspended, the truth that messages, news, accounts and videos were banned indicates the government did monitor us, and will interfere online free speeches.

This is the world we are. A world without privacy.

Except the monitors, sometimes people are giving out the information themselves unintentionally. By using different devices, like cameras, cell phones, and printers, we create large amounts of data that cannot be accessed directly.

What is behind a photograph? Probably some secrets. In 2012, Apple released the newest iPhone 5 with a built-in application Apple Maps. Usually, the military facilities are not shown or in mosaic. However, it is funny that Apple Maps showed a top-secret long-range radar base in the northern county of Hsinchu, Taiwan (phys.org). Besides these information we can directly seen from the images, the data behind a digital image can tell many things. The special format that digital cameras save within the storage is called EXIF format, published by CIPA in 2010, which can record information including but not limited to the camera’s manufacturer, model number, when the image was taken, the resolution of the image, whether the flashlight is on (Exif/DCF). These information was hidden inside the image, being encrypted, but can be easily decoded. If we decode these information, we can easily trace the origin of the image. Probably the best way to conceal these information is to screenshot the original image to a completely new resource.

Almost everyone has a cell phone nowadays. All the smartphones have the function of GPS, which is the abbreviation for Global Position System that can locate where the device is. Although some people tried to conceal their whereabouts by banning this function, it is still quite simple to locate a device if it receives signals. The book “Blown to Bits” shows us a dramatic story.

On September 19, 2007, while driving alone near Seattle on her way to work, Tanya Rider went off the road and crashed into a ravine. For eight days, she was trapped upside down in the wreckage of her car ... Fortunately, rescuers ultimately found her.

Tanya was found because cell phone companies keep records of cell phone locations. When you carry your cell phone, it regularly sends out a digital “ping”, a few bits conveying a “Here I am!” message (Abelson Et al. 1).

The cell phone companies receive the “pings” to know which base station is the nearest to you, after that they can provide services effectively. Normally it is not allowed to examine these data, but this case is a bit special, that the police suspected Tanya’s husband of involvement in her disappearance, and the police have the legal right to check these information. (Abelson Et al. 2) What a lucky misunderstanding.

It seems quite impossible to trace where a printed paper is from. However, research from EFF indicates that color printers secretly prints some special dots representing the date, time, and printer serial number on the works (EFF). These dots are only small pixels that can only be observed by microscopes. However, it seems that even a piece of paper is not safe anymore, as it is traceable. Is there anything that cannot be traced? What we finally recognized is that we are completely “naked” online.

Nevertheless, giving out our information is necessary and acceptable, as what we gain is much more valuable than what we lost. We are now in a world of big data. Big data is “a term for massive datasets and exhibits unique characteristics as compared with traditional data, mainly including volume velocity and variety” (Hou Et al. 1). If corporations and the government collect more information and analyze them, they can provide better service for people. The government, for example, is responsible for protecting the citizens. The example shown upon about printers printing special dots secretly is quite explicable and reasonable, because the government don’t want some criminals printing forged notes using printers. Through tracing these dots, the police can find the serial number of the printer and then find these criminals. We are actually protected by the government regulations. Facing the severe situation of rising cyberattacks, many official organizations are founded to protect people’s online privacy and deal with complaints, including IC3 and DC3, and their influence is increasing. According to IC3’s annual reports, since the organization was founded in 2001, the incoming complaints are increasing steadily, with a peak of 336.66 thousand at 2009 (IC3).

However, in the last few years, the cyberattacks are increasing, but the amount of incoming complaints remains around 300 thousand. This is probably because of the endpoint protection revolution, that organizations upgraded their protection and defense in recent years.

Besides protection from massive cyberattacks, there are something that we can gain more directly: the coupons and recommendations. I am a tea lover and I always buy tea packs and sometimes instant coffee in Safeway. Last time when I swiped my Safeway card on the self checkout machine, it automatically came out a Starbucks coupon. Supermarkets like Safeway can collect customers’ shopping transactions and furthermore deduct their shopping habits and print out coupons to them. It is a good discount to me. At the same time, it means Safeway can sell more things. It is a win-win deal, doesn’t it? Probably someone doesn’t prefer supermarkets collecting these data, but on the other hand he needs to pay more money than club members, which is usually called “privacy tax” (Abelson Et al. 38). Same thing goes for Amazon. Amazon stores are actually designed personalize for each customer using item-to-item recommendation algorithms within only subsecond processing time and react immediately (IEEE. 5). With accumulating massive amount of customers’ data, corporations like Safeway and Amazon can provide better and personalized service to us. Although we lost some privacy, what we had in return seems to be more attractive.

Overall, we cannot avoid giving out our privacy, if we want to live in a digital world. We do not have enough time, patience, and effort to secure our whole privacy. That is the truth. So why are we opposing this, even we know it is no use? Those people requiring so-called online privacy are still using their phone, twitter accounts, and credit cards, anything that can create traceable information. Just admit this world and enjoy the better life.

Notes

1. See the document wenshu.court.gov.cn/content/content?DocID=3b8b5e27-0c6d-4ef7-ad70-a74400fed4a0 (in Chinese) for further readings. The document is a court verdict in China about Lee selling 40,460 pieces of personal information illegally for profit in 2016.

2. The word “China” in this essay refers to the Mainland China, the area of People’s Republic of China except Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan, if not specially clarified.

3. See the banned video www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyRUqZQXR30 (in Chinese) for further information. The video is a Chinese talk show by a celebrity Wang.

Works Cited

1. Orwell, George. Nineteen Eighty-Four. New York: Knopf, 1992.

2. Jiang, Jie, editor. Jiangxi “correctional” School Closed amid Physical Abuse Accusations, 6 Nov. 2017, en.people.cn/n3/2017/1106/c90000-9289136.html. Accessed 2 Dec. 2017.

3. Taiwan to Ask Apple to Blur Sensitive Military Images. 9 Oct. 2012, phys.org/news/2012-10-taiwan-apple-blur-sensitive-military.html. Accessed 2 Dec. 2017.

4. Exif/DCF Working Group. Exchangeable Image File Format for Digital Still Cameras: Exif Version 2.3. Camera & Imaging Products Association, 2012, www.cipa.jp/std/documents/e/DC-008-2012_E.pdf.

5. Abelson, Harold, Ken Ledeen, and Harry R. Lewis. Blown to Bits: Your Life, Liberty, and Happiness After the Digital Explosion. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Addison-Wesley, 2008.

6. Electronic Frontier Foundation. “DocuColor Tracking Dot Decoding Guide.” w2.eff.org/Privacy/printers/docucolor/. Accessed 3 Dec. 2017.

7. Weigang Hou, Pengxing Guo, and Lei Guo. Networking Big Data: Definition, Key Technologies and Challenging Issues of Transmission. 2015.

8. IC3. “Incoming Complaints about Internet Crime on The Ic3 Website from 2000 to 2016 (in 1,000).” Statista — The Statistics Portal, Statista, www.statista.com/statistics/267546/number-of-complaints-about-us-internet-crime/, Accessed 4 Dec. 2017.

9. Greg Linden, Brent Smith, and Jeremy York. Amazon.com Recommendations: Item-to-item Collaborative Filtering. IEEE Industry Report, February 2003.