#donothack

Episode 1: In the first episode before I entered any information at all they were able to figure out twas on their website from the United States. Not only that but they were able to see what specific city I was viewing it from and they even told me the temperature in the city. Then they asked me where I got my news and entertainment from. I told them I saw news from twitter and got entertainment from YouTube. They were then able to tell me that based off those websites I had five third parties tracking me. Third parties don’t need to track on sites like Amazon because what you buy on their site leaves a trail in itself. In most online websites you cannot avoid being tracked all you can do is delete your cookies once you are done with the website.

Episode 2: Cookies are what allows websites to track you online. They were put out as a way for companies to get to know you so that they could deliver ads that are specific to your interests. These cookies stay on your computer even after you leave the website that you got them from and they continue to gather information about you. You can delete the cookies to try and get rid of them but this is only a short term solution.

Episode 3: In episode 3 they went in and they focused on the social media world of Facebook. By using this they explained how companies would be able to tell a lot about you specifically based on what you liked and get an accurate read on things such as personality. They were even able to show how insurance could look at your profile and decide if you could get health insurance or not. Apparently because I’m a 19 year old male I would be very high risk for a health insurance company.

Episode 4: In this episode we found out that your smart phone gathers tons of information about you. It gathers more than you could possibly know. Most of the apps that are on your phone gather information that is not needed for the app to function. You can find out which of your apps are doing this by downloading another app whose function is to specifically find out which apps are gathering more information than they are telling you about.

Episode 5: Algorithms are used to monitor all of the data that we put out onto the internet. They are analyzed by computers to figure out aspects of our daily lives. They are also designed to be able to realize the things that we aren’t saying and be able to use that information. The computers are more accurate than even your own family when they are trying to figure out how someone is feeling. These algorithms dominate our lives because they are able to not only see what we say but they can also figure out things that we don’t say as well.

Episode 6: In episode six we explored filter bubbles. A filter bubble is when a website such as Facebook has seen the things that you have liked so it will promote that you like more things that are along a similar thought pattern. They also only show you things that are similar because they assume that’s what you will be interested in. You don’t end up seeing things with a different ideology. This causes a problem because you only end up seeing one side of a story. You can burst out of a filter bubble by liking and showing interest in another source that you normally wouldn’t be interested in that way you can see different ways of thinking.