Online Privacy Starts Drawing People’s Attention

As technology grows, there’ve been more and more issues it has tackled down. However, it doesn’t justify technology as an absolutely positive force. In fact, some highlight the threat it may inflict towards one’s privacy, specifically online privacy. How do Indonesians perceive this matter?

According to a survey by Microsoft, which is posted on its official blog, the issue of privacy is a time bomb for the growth of technology, both in developed and developing countries like Indonesia.

In numerous countries, the issue indeed is a sensitive one. The most recent case would be the rejection towards Facebook’s Internet.org program by NGOs in numerous countries, including the ICT Watch of Indonesia.

In a vast and highly populated country like Indonesia, online privacy indeed is something that draws people’s attention. This is implied by a survey done by JakPat. Out of 512 respondents, more than 40 percent do care and carefully learn the privacy setting in each and every service they use, with 57,81 percent of them were worried that their personal data being used by an unauthorized third party. Nonetheless, there were still 12 percent of them admitted that the privacy setting is out of their interests.

Online privacy setting may look simple, but it may be the trigger to tons of online fraud and other similar crimes. The most possible ones include the robbery of personal data, including someone’s date of birth, e-mail address, personal photograph, and many other. The survey also revealed that 85,55 percent of the respondents use their genuine account while doing their online activities.

In Indonesia, ICT Watch is one of, or probably the only one, NGO that really cares about this online privacy issue. Through its Internet Sehat program, the institution even attempts on educating the people, especially those early adopters, about the importance of carefully considering everything before doing everything on the internet through its “think before posting” campaign.