Privacy on the Internet and in CFB!!
Privacy today on the internet is a major problem, with so many different hackers and bots out there, it seems you cannot do anything on the internet without the fear that somebody will either steal your information or watch your every single movement. This can also be said about college football or just sports in general. According to a lecture given by Dr. Paul Gates, “Privacy is something we don’t have anymore, it was giving away”. Now what I believe Dr. Gates is saying, is that with the birth of social medias like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat…. Just to name a few, we post things from our everyday life on these platforms for everyone to see. Doing this we make these things available for anyone and everyone and lets them do whatever they want to with them. But this is not just linked to social media, this can happen at a simple place lik
e the grocery store. According to Dr. Gates, these companies can track what you are buying every time you come into one of their stores, for example when you go to Food Lion and sign up for an MVP card, that card is linked to you and you only. So, when you swipe your card it keeps track of all the things you are purchasing and will use that information to try and help you out by sending you coupons for the things that have shown up on your MVP card the most. This is not necessarily a bad thing when you are trying to be a thrifty shopper. But there are very serious threats out there when you use your credit card to purchase items online, you may think it’s a good idea to save your payment information so that when you make a future purchase the process is quicker. There are people out there who are just looking for information like that. Sports are not exempt from these types incidents. Going back to what I was talking about earlier, with people posting things on social media, athletes of big time programs seem to always fall victim to this. These athletes are supposed to be people who set examples for young fans and the communities they represent. But we all know of at least one incident, where there was an athlete who didn’t know they were being watched or recorded and they ended up doing something wrong or they might not. But once it is out there it can be manipulated any way a person wants to manipulate it. For example, someone catches a video of say Johnny Manziel and he has a cup in his hand, that person can go ahead and post it up on Facebook and knowing the trouble past he has, post that Johnny Manziel caught drinking in Miami without even knowing what is actually in the cup. People will buy into this story without really knowing what is going on, and because of his past, he has no chance of defending himself. College football players and other college athletes fall victim to this more than other athletes because of the fact they are young kids and like to do things other kids their ages are doing like going to a party or something along those lines. In closing people really need to be aware of their surroundings on and off-line because you just never know who is watching, and going back to what my First Sergeant told me when I was in the Army always act in a way that would not embarrass your grandmother because someone is always watching you.
