Online privacy should be millennial priority

Millennials are some of the most socially active people, especially on the web. On average, people between the ages of 18 and 34 report that they spend three or more hours on the internet every day. Social media use adds another three hours to that total.         

Young people are among those least concerned with internet security. A 2015 study by the American Press Institute revealed that a third of our generation is not concerned about internet security. That is a worrying statistic. More than half of all millennials claim that they have encountered problems like their account being hacked or mistakenly installing malware. Unsurprisingly, most millennials claim to want additional internet security to protect their information. In response, half of millennials use customized privacy settings on social media websites, and some claim to go out of their way to limit the amount of personal information they share with others online. However, most millennials do not go far enough to protect themselves online.

They make sparse use of some of the most effective tools for securing their internet browsing and personal information. Things like antivirus software, virtual private networks, IP address masking and browser plug-ins that obscure personal information each nets the use of a minimal number of millennials. Most of the strategies detailed above see use by less than 20 percent of our generation. Coincidentally, this percentage correlates with the proportion of millennials who worry “most of the time” about security, according to the American Press Institute study.

Millennials should take online security seriously. The online realm is not as safe as some seem to think. The danger of malware is not restrained to getting a virus that exclusively causes pop-ups every time you open a web browser. Online identity theft is frighteningly common. Bank account fraud can cause substantial financial losses. Spyware can let a complete stranger know your most intimate personal details and behavioral habits just by observing your online activity. There are criminal threats all over the web to unsuspecting surfers.

The problems do not end there, though. Future employers, graduate schools and even prosecutors oftentimes use an individual’s online profiles to learn more about the person they are studying. It goes without saying that this can have disastrous consequences for those who are not concerned with their internet privacy or security. A cover letter shows someone at their presumed best; an embarrassing, drunken Facebook post shows an applicant at their worst. Employers, professors and prosecutors want to know the kind of people they are dealing with, and although many people have skeletons in their closets, most are competent enough to keep them in there. Many millennials, it seems, are content to let them tumble out into an embarrassing heap in front of anyone with enough curiosity to enter their name into a search engine.

Furthermore, web-based corporations can sell information about you to other companies or individuals. Advertisers, for example, use this data to tailor advertisements to certain demographics based on their browsing activity and behavioral trends. To be clear, this is not information that you are deliberately and expressly choosing to give, piece by piece, to a singular individual. This is passive, mass-data collection that feeds your individual habits into a processor, which spits out individualized information based on who the program thinks you are. The processor is not always correct, but it is deeply concerning that this information is being sold, oftentimes without your express knowledge and only with implicit consent, by operators of the websites you visit.

A journalist from TIME Magazine gave a CEO of a web-based reputation website his name and email address. Within hours, he was called back by the company and was read his Social Security Number. This example illustrates that, without proper safeguards, even an individual’s most intimate personal information can be discovered and manipulated online. The people you email, the friends you hang out with most, the places you like to get coffee or a late-night meal — these are all things that can be discovered through relatively simple means if one does not make an effort to obscure them. We belong to the generation that came of age with the internet. But the millennial generation should not be known as the one that was blinded by the internet’s conveniences.

The dangers of irresponsible internet use are not only personal. In 2007, the United States government demonstrated that an industrial power generator could be instructed to destroy itself by manipulating its computer code. In December 2015, a part of Ukraine’s power grid responsible for supplying electricity to 225,000 people was hacked and temporarily shut down. The way that hackers got into the power station’s computers: Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Word.

Individual responsibility and security are each “web-izen’s” personal responsibility. In an era where even governments cannot be trusted to securely handle our personal data, the only arbiter of your digital safety is ourselves: The less that we choose to put out, the less that can be abused.

Lida Dianti is a junior majoring in international relations. Her column, “That’s So Racist!,” runs  Wednesdays.