Week 14: Privacy, Online & Off

The Ted Talk I will be discussing is from Andy Yen: Think your email’s private? Think again. I watched the other Ted Talks, and I knew about most of the information that was being discussed in them. I choose to focus solely on Andy Yen’s Ted Talk, because I did not realize that emails were not private. I knew if you were connected to a schools email such as High Point email server, but I did not realize that other servers were able to collect data see and your email. Honestly, the only way I believe that someone could see your email is if you hacked into it, which in retrospect does not really make senses since I know Google collects your data and digital footprint.

In Andy Yen’s Ted Talk he discusses how our data can last forever and even outlive us. Then begins to talk about how we lost privacy over the years and the privacy continues to go down each year. Then eventually our generation will not remember what true privacy is or even feels like. My favorite part of the Ted Talk was Yen discussing his startup ProtonMail. ProtonMail works by creating a safe place to send emails that are private between you and another person. Someone is able to send a message that servers are not able to read. These messages are encrypted before even leaving your desktop or laptop, then once it get the recipient of the email, the email then needs to be decrypted.

Although, I find ProtonMail a lot of work just to be able to have a private conversation; it seems necessary. The way our society is going with technology, I do not foresee us getting our privacy back. So having different outlets where you can be able to have a private conversation is a good idea to me.