The 21st century has added a new weapon to the arsenal of persecutors. Credit card companies can lower a customer 's credit limit based solely on where they’ve shopped. An employer can make his or her decision on hiring an employee using just social media footprints. Lori Andrews presents frightening information in her essay “Facebook Is Using You”. Through the use of statistics, anecdotal evidence, and appeals to the audience 's sense of fear, she successfully convinces the reader that there is a need for a Do-Not-Track law. Statistics are used throughout Andrew’s essay, starting with “Facebook made $3.2 billion in advertising revenue last year, 85% of its total revenue” (552). However, Andrews neglects to mention that that is a small percentage
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Andrews tells the story of a man whose “credit limit had been lowered to $3,800 from $10,800” (552), because he had shopped at places where others who shopped there had a “poor repayment history with American Express” (553). What many people don’t realize is what they do online isn 't’ necessarily private. A school bus driver in Georgia wrote a post on his Facebook about “a student on his bus said he was denied lunch because he owed 40 cents” (Broderick, Grinberg). He was subsequently fired when he refused to remove the post after the school district found out about it and requested that it be removed. It’s not just jobs that people are losing over their online activities. According to Andrews, “LexisNexis has a product called Accurint for Law Enforcement, which gives government agents information about what people do on social networks” (552). That means someone can be convicted of a crime or lose a child custody case due to online information that they thought was …show more content…
Andrews introduces the term “Weblining” which “describes the practice of denying people opportunities based on their digital selves” (553). She alerts the audience to the possibility of being denied health insurance coverage based on a web search. Also, she implores the chance of a person being advertised credit cards with lower credit limits because of their age, ZIP code, types of Web sites visited, and other information that can easily be picked up by “cookies” in a person’s internet browser. The shocking reality of all this is that they are doing this without asking for a person 's permission. A possibility she fails to address is what happens in the case that information becomes available for purposes other than intended. “A recent Government Accountability Office (GAO) report found the number of information-security incidents in which personal information was involved has more than doubled over the last few years, exceeding 25,000 in fiscal 2013” (“Privacy”). That means that every day there are approximately 68.5 incidents where personal information is stolen from major holders of sensitive data, such as credit card information, social security numbers, and usernames and passwords. So through the use of a virus, bug (a flaw in the software being used), and malware, thieves are able to gain access to
Andrews tells the story of a man whose “credit limit had been lowered to $3,800 from $10,800” (552), because he had shopped at places where others who shopped there had a “poor repayment history with American Express” (553). What many people don’t realize is what they do online isn 't’ necessarily private. A school bus driver in Georgia wrote a post on his Facebook about “a student on his bus said he was denied lunch because he owed 40 cents” (Broderick, Grinberg). He was subsequently fired when he refused to remove the post after the school district found out about it and requested that it be removed. It’s not just jobs that people are losing over their online activities. According to Andrews, “LexisNexis has a product called Accurint for Law Enforcement, which gives government agents information about what people do on social networks” (552). That means someone can be convicted of a crime or lose a child custody case due to online information that they thought was …show more content…
Andrews introduces the term “Weblining” which “describes the practice of denying people opportunities based on their digital selves” (553). She alerts the audience to the possibility of being denied health insurance coverage based on a web search. Also, she implores the chance of a person being advertised credit cards with lower credit limits because of their age, ZIP code, types of Web sites visited, and other information that can easily be picked up by “cookies” in a person’s internet browser. The shocking reality of all this is that they are doing this without asking for a person 's permission. A possibility she fails to address is what happens in the case that information becomes available for purposes other than intended. “A recent Government Accountability Office (GAO) report found the number of information-security incidents in which personal information was involved has more than doubled over the last few years, exceeding 25,000 in fiscal 2013” (“Privacy”). That means that every day there are approximately 68.5 incidents where personal information is stolen from major holders of sensitive data, such as credit card information, social security numbers, and usernames and passwords. So through the use of a virus, bug (a flaw in the software being used), and malware, thieves are able to gain access to