Over the past week I studied about big data privacy, what privacy is on the internet and why it matters. Your data is definitely not as safe as you may think, many companies will pay to know what anyone is doing at any given time and what they have been doing, where they’ve been, and what they like and don’t like. Internet service providers can see whatever you’ve been doing online and I’m sure they sell it to Google and Facebook to get a better understanding of what kind of person you are. Honestly, I don’t care that much about companies wanting to know what I like and don’t like, I know that the main purpose of that knowledge is for targeted ads. The problem I have with companies who want this info is that they often don’t disclose that they are collecting this info, they usually don’t say what its for or where its going, how it’s being used. This is a problem for most people, this drives the concerns of privacy. If companies would be totally transparent and tell you that your information is encrypted and is just used for an algorithm’s targeted ad sake and can’t be touched by humans, then I feel that this would make people a lot more willing to give out this personal info. I suppose though that it is easier for companies to just violate your privacy and not ask permission, or hide it in some fine print in a terms and conditions than it is to be honest. People are slowly becoming more aware of how fragile their privacy on the internet is, and it big companies will eventually need to address that issue.