Mission Two - How We Did It

To get a good understanding of data privacy and to make sure we covered as much as we could, we divided this main topic in to sub topics. We wanted to discuss the law and how we’re protected from harm, then we wanted to see what kind of ‘false traps’ there may be, ie. Is incognito mode really incognito, and then we wanted to look into what data privacy is and how we can get it and keep it safe. I wanted to do this sub topic as I’m someone who uses incognito thinking that it’s more private. I use it to print bills or research topics that would change my cache and targeted ads. I wanted to see how effective it actually was and was there any point in me doing it or was it completely useless.

We took to Google to find relevant articles and different websites with good information. I took the incognito route, looking straight at what Google actually says about its own policies. This, straight away, showed me how much attention we actually don’t pay to what’s around us. Google says, without beating around the bush, that your internet provider, your school, your employer, etc, can all see your browsing history, and that it’s just your local access that’s wiped. It really made me think about how quick we are to assume that because it’s incognito mode it must be safe to use and there must be privacy with it. This was also something I realised when we talked about GDPR and terms and conditions. How often does the average person, without prior knowledge of any of this, actually read through the terms before clicking yes, continue, go ahead? I personally don’t, and I would imagine that 99.9% of people would be no different from me. But why are we so quick to dismiss these messages when they are clearly warnings or information that we should know?

We then put this presentation together, deciding what was important to be up on screen to drive our points, and what we ourselves needed to put in our own words on the spot. We cut down a lot of what we already had, as we’d gathered so much information about this topic. We picked the important parts out and came up with a presentation within the time limits. We wanted to keep peoples’ attention throughout the presentation as data privacy is possible to obtain but so few people know how to get it, even though it’s easy to find ways to do so.

We spent an hour or so before the presentation just discussing what we felt would be the best way to present, who should talk about what, and what our thoughts were on the whole topic. We then re-read the entire presentation to see if there was any clarifications needed or anything else that we thought should be removed.