"People are starting to understand “that the web watches them back,” says Aleecia McDonald, a privacy researcher at Stanford’s Center for Internet and Society. But we still don’t appreciate the extent to which it’s happening or what risks we might face in the future. McDonald suggests thinking of the internet as a backward-facing time machine that we are constantly loading with ammunition: “Everything that’s on file about you for the last 15 years and the next 40 years” may someday be used against you with technology that, at this time, we can’t understand or predict.
Danielle Citron, a law professor at the University of Maryland and the author of Hate Crimes in Cyberspace, began studying cyberharassment in 2007. What she found reminded her of her past research on the shocking leakiness of information databases. Nearly all of us are giving away reams of sensitive information about ourselves without understanding how it might be used, whether by a stalker or an unscrupulous company."
- Date Published:11/14/2017
- Original Publication:Wired