Encryption is the only thing protecting our kids on the internet today

We as parents are supposed to be extra cautious when letting our kids use the internet. But sadly, that’s not the case. I’m not talking about setting up parental control to block 18+ content, but rather, I’m talking about sharing every little detail about our children online.

I’m sure you’re telling yourself this right now — I never share anything about my kids online.

Well, you’d be wrong. I’m not being rude. How else do you explain all the pictures of your kids on Facebook, Instagram, Google Drive, iCloud, and so on and so forth?

But you’re not alone. We’re all guilty of doing this. After all, it is easy to think that our accounts are password protected. However, we all need to understand that data powers the world. Big corporations are hungry for it and they’ll do anything to get a hold of your data.

Who’s violating your kids' privacy rights?

Well, there are a lot of tech companies that need data to sell products and services. Among all the data hoarding tech companies, Google is arguably the most infamous.

Just in September of 2011, Google was fined $170 million for violating children's privacy rights on YouTube.

Regulatory bodies accused Google of illegally harvesting personal information of young children through advertisements and profiting off of it.

Even though Google got fined a hefty amount, it barely makes a dent in the tech giants’ revenue numbers. After all, when Google‘s parent company “Alphabet” is making 41.2 billion dollars just in the first quarter of 2020, $170 million fine is nothing.

Regulatory bodies need to understand that fines are not going to be enough to teach companies like Google a lesson. In fact, concerned authorities like the FTC need to come up with strict regulations to protect children and their data.

Nothing is wasted, everything is stored in databases

Nowadays, our children are constantly hooked to their phones. We as adults might not feel comfortable sharing our personal information online, however, kids usually don’t think too much before posting stuff like what they did today or what they like or dislike.

All this information might not mean anything to us, however, for advertising platforms like Google, Facebook, and others, it's a gold mine waiting to be harvested.

Companies target kids for their data because it is easy. They collect personal information and then sell it to advertisers, insurance companies, future employers, and so on and so forth.

I’m sure you have an idea of how sensitive the matter is. We need to protect our kids today. We must stop feeding data harvesting machines with the personal information of our kids.

Data harvesting and the threat to our lives

Mass data harvesting can have devastating impacts on our society. By extracting personal information, tech companies can develop a proper profile of our lifestyle. If we talk about our kids, tech companies know where our children study, what are their habits, what background they belong to, and much more.

Basically Everything!

This is not right. It is highly unethical. All this data can be used to manipulate unbiased decisions. Take for example the elections of 2016. Well, we all know what happened there.

Encryption is the only hope

So is there any hope? Well as I said earlier, encryption is the only hope we have. We must start using tools that offer end to end encryption.

Tools like VPNs are a great place to start. A VPN can virtually keep you and your kids anonymous online. It stops advertising companies from tracking you significantly, making you virtually anonymous online.

If you’re looking to start using VPNs, I recommend going for the free trial of ExpressVPN. Anyways, like I was saying, encryption is the only hope left for our kids to feel safe online. It is the only technology that can prevent data hoarders from stealing our kids' data and abusing it in one way or the other.