In Europe a new law, the General Data Protection Regulation or (GDPR) is about to take effect. This new law will help insure that Europeans will have increased privacy protections. Preventing many companies from data mining their users personal information. In a phone interview with Reuters yesterday Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook declined to confirm that these new protections would be universally implemented. Skirting the issue. This would imply then that if you don’t live in the EU you will not be enjoying the same protections that millions of others will have by default.
When you combine this and the Cambridge Analytica / Facebook snafu, in which 50 million users privacy was ignored and their experiences on Facebook polluted via ads trying to push a certain political view, it does not look good for the privacy of the average American using Facebook.
So as has been always the case, you will have to be in charge of your own privacy while using the Internet. As these bigger companies are turning computer end users into their primary product.
So implement all the privacy changes that experts have already been talking about for a long time. Use https everywhere, privacy badger, popup blockers, VPN’s and of course go into the privacy setting on Facebook and set them to more secure settings.
Not sure how to do all this? Call your local Computer Expert, RenoGeek.