It is absolutely no secret that our privacy as a society has never been more at risk than it is now due to living in a digital world. We don't just have to worry about criminals stealing our personal and banking data, but now we also have to worry about big businesses like banks and insurance companies. What makes matters worse is that we easily and willingly give up much personal privacy. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Privacy is a right that belongs to every individual. Privacy can be defined as an individual's ability to isolate and express themselves selectively. But most of us don't understand how what we post is used, how it is tracked, collected and used for various functions. Have you ever Googled a product and then immediately been bombarded with ads for the same product or brand, this is a perfect example of how the Internet watches our every move. Every email you send, every product you've purchased online, everything you've posted, and everywhere you go is saved and archived. Search engines use this data to provide advertisers with a more receptive audience. People see social media as a non-profit public service and a way to share and receive information with friends. What we don't know is that social media companies generate their profits through targeted advertising. The more we publish, the more information the company can collect, which will result in better targeting and more revenue. Take the recent Facebook data scandal that resulted in the privacy of over 50 million Facebook users being breached which was then used to target advertisements in the 2016 presidential election. This was done by selling users' personal information to a political consulting firm who used the data to create ads that manipulated users into voting for a particular candidate. The social media giant is not the only culprit other social networks have done this, Facebook was the first company to be caught. Many companies get away with it because their privacy policies are constantly changing and we never bother to read the hundreds of documents they send us and if we ever get the chance we are unable to understand what is being said since we are not lawyers. One of the biggest dangers is something we carry around with us every day and use freely without paying attention. I'm talking about our credit cards, the magnetic stripe of ATM cards contains a large amount of data and is easily hackable. Even though we are constantly warned to proceed with caution on the Internet and not to provide personal information after receiving an email telling us that we have won €50 million in a lottery in England that we have never entered, many of us they are willing to voluntarily give up their personal data which will be used for everything from identity theft to hacking their bank account. However the future looks better as governments are now putting more pressure on companies to change their obscure privacy policies and agencies are now reading terms and conditions that almost all internet users completely ignore. Companies are encouraged to be fully transparent to provide users with a sense of security and understanding of how our data is stored and used. Despite these positive changes to look out for, it will certainly be a long time before we can.