Published in El Pais, 23 October 2018.
It is becoming more apparent that companies are gathering your private information either with or without your knowledge (for the purposes of this article, blindingly giving companies permission to collect your information by hitting the “accept” button does not count as knowingly). Thanks to major data breaches like the one at Facebook people are starting to get more concerned with who knows what about us.
In the latest attack, spammers collected data from some 30-50 million users. The damage that can be done can range from a mild nuisance by getting unwanted emails to being more vulnerable to phishing attacks where scammers try to obtain more valuable information like banking passwords. If a major tech company like Facebook can be breached, it is understandable if someone does not feel safe giving their personal information to anyone no matter what the initial intent.
This is why in the latest update Apple has decided to share exactly what they have on each user. One can go to any apple device and request a report on your profile which apple will prepare 7 days, so you know just exactly what information is at risk should they be the next victim of a hack. If, however when you obtain the report and find apple has more information on you than you would like there is not much you can do.
While Apple is making you aware of this information chances are many companies have much more information on you than you would like and short of going off the grid there is not much you can do as we need to give it up for many of our electronic devices and online services that we cannot live without. We can however be proactive when we hear about giant data breaches by changing our passwords and be weary of any emails coming from big tech companies asking for personal information.
This all may seem scary, and for that I apologize but if we all keep our guards up their really should be no concern. Big companies are not out to get you, but they are far from perfect. If we do our part to protect our own data we should be fine.
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