Everybody is entitled to the right to privacy. It is a fundamental human right that falls under the first-generation human right—except, with technology, it’s not! Today, there is a lot of controversy surrounding privacy because its definition varies globally. Technology has many benefits, but it hasn’t helped on this front. If anything, its development has further brought confusion in understanding privacy as a fundamental human right.

The widespread security issues continue to undermine the protection of privacy. They need constant control and surveillance of what happens in this world. Given the many benefits of technology, privacy is often overlooked despite its significance. Here, we look at ten ways technology has destroyed privacy.

Related: Top 10 Alternatives To Popular Sites And Apps (That Protect Your Privacy)

10 The Untold Side of Biometric Scanners

Thanks to technology, you can now use your eyes, fingers, or face for identification. Biometric scanners are undoubtedly fast, convenient, and almost secure. Apart from unlocking your phone, checking into your workplace, and gaining access to designated areas, people continue to find ways of leveraging the services provided by biometric scanners. For instance, some hotels and fast foods use biometric scanners to scan their customers’ faces and tell who made their orders first and what they ordered.

This may seem like a normal act for unsuspecting customers and another convenient technological advancement. However, if a system can identify you based on your past movements, it shows that it can store short-term or long-term data. What happens to the stored data? While it’s true that there are policies and regulations set barring companies from using the information and data they obtain from their customers illegally, you cannot always trust people like that. As much as they help, biometric scanners remain one of the biggest privacy threats to unsuspecting users.

9 Voice Interception

Have you ever heard of Lawful Interception (LI)? Yes, it’s just as fishy as it sounds. LI allows law enforcement to eavesdrop on users of communication networks, provided they have the mandate to do so. This means a government agent can walk into a Mobile Network Carrier (MNC) and demand access to the channel and supporting data. With these, the agent can listen to conversations of the people of interest without their knowledge. While this technology can help solve crimes, it can be exploited if people with wrong intentions gain access to it, and they mostly do.

Imagine sitting in your house talking to the love of your life, talking about all the things that even the walls must not hear, only to notice that a third party is listening to your conversation. Or, you are passing critical information to a colleague or partner, only for someone else to tap your discussion. Many people have lost their properties and money through these voice interception apps. Mobile phones are perfect for communication, but users should know they risk privacy breaches while on them.

8 The Internet Doesn’t Forget, Nor Is It Ever Full

Showbiz celebrities have mostly been on the end of internet data and document leaks. However, this is only so because of their status and the positions they assume in the community. Many people have seen pictures, videos, or audio they would rather keep to themselves leak online and away from their control. Cases of bitter exes exposing the nudity of their once partners continue to rock the internet today.

Before the massive technological advancements, intimate partners, leaders, and influential people did not have the internet to worry about. At this point, they would square it out alone without airing their dirty linen in public if anyone had a problem with anybody. Undoubtedly, technology has improved communication along with other aspects of life. But in so doing, it has put most people in the mercies of other people, just to avoid having their private documents, pictures, audio, or videos surfacing online. The most devastating part is that it is very easy to “leak” content online that it almost goes untraced. Once it’s there, it’s never truly deleted.

7 Online Cookies

Have you ever been browsing the internet and started seeing emails or adverts prompting you to buy or subscribe to a newsletter similar to the content you have been surfing? For instance, if you are looking for the latest models of your preferred TV brand, you immediately start seeing ads for the best TV offers. While this is not entirely bad, how did the advertisers know your interests? Simple answer: cookies!

When you visit a website, and it asks you to “allow or reject cookies,” the page owner is simply “seeking permission” to monitor your online activities. The question remains: what more information do cookies collect? In fact, there are some pages you can’t browse without accepting the cookies—it feels like trading your privacy for something else.

6 Video Conferencing, Webinars, and Chat Apps Don’t Help Much Either

Zoom is one of the most popular teleconferencing platforms. It gained its fame when most people were required to work from home. To be fair, it helps colleagues to communicate effectively and keep companies in line with their goals. However, as you know, there is a price for everything. For this and similar apps, the price is your privacy.

So many embarrassing cases have been witnessed since these teleconferencing apps became a thing. For instance, a respectable family member and company might be busy addressing their colleague only for a family member to start twerking half naked in the background, not knowing that the camera is on. In such as case, it’s no one’s fault; one has to work, and the other has to live their best life at home.

5 GPS Tracking

GPS is an acronym for Global Positioning System. Given that it is available globally and is powered by world satellites, people rely on it to travel anywhere they want. GPS is the modern-day directory, only that it is more advanced, and anyone with a smart device can use it. We can go on all day about the benefits of this system and still not exhaust them. However, our concern comes in when privacy is thrown out the window. When using your smartphone, it is “normal” to see a prompt asking you, “app X wants to access your location,” and you wonder why.

Usually, authorities use GPS to locate people of interest and track their movements. In the same spirit, malicious people can tap their victims’ smart devices and follow them wherever. They can even track their cars and other automobiles with simple GPS trackers. Simply put, GPS and privacy doesn’t go together.

4 Internet Service Providers’ Uncontrolled Privileges

Internet Service Providers, popularly known as ISPs, provide customers with an internet connection at a cost. The clients then use the internet provided to surf, work, or entertain themselves but not without the watchful eye of the ISPs. Unsurprisingly, you can visit one site and are told you can’t access it while your internet connection is on and working on other platforms; that is probably because your ISP has blocked you from accessing it.

ISPs can tell your IP address and see the sites you visit. Who is to say they can’t access your private information if they want to? Unfortunately, to leverage the full feature of technology, it’s almost inevitable that we have to give up some degree of our privacy.

3 Remote Desktop Applications

Remote desktop applications such as TeamViewer and AnyDesk have become extremely useful, especially after the pandemic rocked the world. They allow you to access your computer remotely, providing a good internet connection. This way, colleagues can work remotely, or you can access vital files and documents even if you do not have your device with you.

As expected, you must give up some privacy for these applications to function optimally. For instance, if you pair your computer with a colleague’s for work purposes, the other person can access and alter most of the features in your computer (including those that are not work-related). Even if the person you are working with pretended not to have seen something on your computer, they would have.

2 Audio Recordings

Audio recorders are one of the biggest privacy invaders in the history of technological developments. People have had conversations with their peers or family members that they thought were confidential, only for them to find what they said in the wrong hands or rooms. Sound recorders were initially created to help journalists record news and businesses attend to their customers. However, as time passed, malicious people discovered they could use these devices to extort or threaten their victims.

The rapid technological developments now allow some communication applications such as WhatsApp to record and send voice notes. However, the recordings have often landed in the wrong hands, causing embarrassment and untold trouble for the owners. The recorded voice is different than face to face conversations in many aspects.

1 Social Media Tracking

And now to the most significant culprit; social media. As it stands, over 4.2 billion people worldwide use different social media platforms, with all demanding that users give up some level of their privacy. The minimum requirement is an email address or mobile phone number, but there is no limit to how much of your privacy they can invade.

For example, Facebook allows users to upload their pictures, post videos, and comment on other peoples’ posts. While this might seem harmless, most users usually do not realize that it becomes easier to track by providing personal details. The more they post, the more they throw away their privacy. The sad bit is that once something appears on social media, it can never be deleted, even if you get the illusion that you have done so. There is always a way through which someone can retrieve your shared content. The bottom line is that social media has no privacy; you can only limit how much you give away.

There seems to be little privacy in the modern world. Modern technologies gather information about us, and we have little control over what happens to this data. We all use the internet, and every time we do, we add to the stock of information available to businesses and the authorities. Most of us accept this as a price we pay for being connected. But it also illustrates that we don’t value privacy as we once did.

We are creatures of habit, and our habits ground us in the world and make our environment more familiar and comfortable. Most of our practices are harmless and have no impact on others. But we have developed some new habits, and old ones have adapted to help us navigate the new age of technological wonders.

The habits we will discuss here are common enough, but if we stop to think about them, they are a little odd. Some of these habits show that privacy is no longer one of our primary concerns. Does it matter? I’ll leave you to decide.

Related: Top 10 Bizarre Ways To Make Money From Disgusting Habits

10 Who Cares?

You’re sitting in a restaurant having a quiet conversation with your partner when a phone rings at the next table. You are then forced to listen to one side of a conversation (sometimes both sides if the speaker is on). Irritated but simultaneously fascinated, you discover that A really hates B, that C is an idiot who doesn’t know what he is doing, and that C is seeing D on the side. You don’t know these people and never will, but you now know more about them than you ever wanted to.

Some people don’t seem to realize that there are boundaries between the private and public worlds. And is it just your imagination, or is the phone conversation louder than it should be? No, it’s not your imagination.

In 1909, a French doctor called Étienne Lombard discovered that people talk at a volume that matches the noise level around them. We often think there is more noise than there actually is and talk more loudly than necessary—especially on the phone.

9 Bull’s Pizzle

We can’t all be as inventive as Shakespeare when it comes to swearing, but most of us have a few choice words that we only roll out on special occasions. We usually know when and where swearing is appropriate—few people would swear in church, but many might when watching a football game with friends.

If used sparingly, swearing is a safety valve that makes your feelings very clear and very public. Some people swear too much and season every conversation with colorful words. This makes swearing counter-productive as well as tedious.

Studies have shown that swearing helps to reduce stress, builds bonds among peers, and is often a sign of fluency, intelligence, and honesty. Naturally, you have to use swear words sparingly and save them for the right moment. In other words, swearing as a habit just makes a public spectacle of the swearer. Shakespeare was the master of the right word at the right time.

8 Where Did I Put It?

My wife refers to my office as “the black hole” because my desk is heaped with papers, stationery, and books. This untidiness in an open office means that your work (and yesterday’s lunch) is in public view. You should never leave confidential stuff lying around for anyone to see—nor yesterday’s lunch, for that matter. While leaving private information, lying is always bad form, and in some cases, it’s illegal. HIPPA and FERPA laws protect patients’ and students’ information, for example.

An untidy desk may show you are creative and too busy to tidy up. On the other hand (which is true in my case), it may simply show that you are lazy. Whatever the reason, it is a very public demonstration of your personality.

People who keep their desks tidy might be more organized if not as creative as their messy colleagues—there is room for both types of people in an organization.

7 What Did I Say?

Most people—96%, according to some studies—have conversations with themselves. But these chats go on in the head. Some 25% of people talk to themselves out loud regularly. This habit can help you work through problems and hear how a phrase might sound. A lot of people will mutter the opening words of an email to themselves before they start clattering away on the keyboard.

When you think about it, it’s a strange habit indeed. Why should talking aloud to yourself clarify things better than just thinking about them? But it seems to work for many of us.

There’s a big difference between rehearsing the first line of an email out loud and constantly talking to yourself disjointedly about anything and everything. The second might indicate a mental health issue, although nowadays, with mobile phones and Bluetooth hearing devices, it’s difficult to be sure.

6 This Is My Lunch

Open your Facebook page, and I am sure that you will find that one of your contacts has posted a photo of some trivial aspect of their life that few, if any people, will have any interest in at all. Do you really want to know what Tom had for lunch?

According to a report in The New York Times, 94% of people post on social media because they want to inform, amuse, and help others. That’s all well and good, but some people take the habit to extremes and post the most trivial rubbish. Others share posts and photos they may regret one day—and the internet never forgets.

Social media platforms have become an important part of our lives in a very short period. That people enjoy using them and find them useful is certainly true. Unfortunately, they have their dark side, and young people can be especially vulnerable to abuse.

We need to educate our young people about appropriate use and the need for caution when using these platforms. This includes parents who post content such as a back-to-school picture with their kid in front of a school sign. A quick Google search will show any creep where your child now attends school. Not cool.

5 Text Me

Next time you are in a restaurant, look beyond the guy talking too loudly on his phone, and you will see a group of people all staring at their screens. Chances are that some of them will be texting their friends.

Why? Are the people at their table too boring to talk to? Why do we need to know exactly what our friends are doing at all times?

And why don’t people send all the information in one text? Why do they message us sentence by sentence? This is not a face-to-face conversation, with texting you answer the first point and then discover that it’s irrelevant because the sender contradicts the first:

A: Is there a meeting on Monday?

B: Yes, there is.

A: Or Tuesday?

B: Monday afternoon.

A: Because I can’t go on Monday.

A: morning.

4 Gossip

We’re social creatures, and connection with others is very important. Most of us can’t resist a good piece of gossip. It’s a social lubricant that is usually harmless enough. However, we should always be aware that gossip implies that an aspect of another person’s life is now in the public sphere.

The problem with gossip is that it is rarely based on complete information, and as it spreads, it becomes more fanciful until, like Chinese whispers, it bears little relationship with the facts.

We should be mindful of what we say and the damage that gossip can cause.

3 Smoking

Smoking, many people will tell you, is a filthy habit. Over recent years, smokers have found that they are not welcome in public places. This should have the effect of driving smoking underground to become a private vice. But this isn’t what happens.

Smoking is addictive; some say it’s easier to quit taking heroin than to give up smoking. A heavy smoker can’t go through an entire workday without a cigarette, so smokers leave the workplace and walk to the nearest place where they can indulge their habit. Here, in all weather, smokers gather in groups exposed to the disapproving eyes of the public.

Smokers reinforce each other’s addiction and form an “us versus them” mentality. Meanwhile, they’re not getting any work done.

Interestingly, psychologists have discovered that putting horrible photos on packs of cigarettes often has the opposite effect to that intended. After a short while, a dedicated smoker associates the photo with cigarettes, and this serves to reinforce the habit.

2 Keep Going

Some people have the habit of persistence. This can take various forms, from the irritating person who won’t stop going on about the same tired subject to the person who keeps trying until they get something right. This habit can keep someone in a job they hate for years or drive a scientist to keep trying until they reach the desired result.

Strangely, many people will simply keep going and never give up. It can be very admirable in many ways, but sometimes it can be very irritating. Regardless, the person will seek out others to share their woes or triumphs with in great detail—ones we really don’t want to know or have any business knowing. The trick is to know when to stop.

1 Me, Myself, I

In search of a perfect selfie to post on Facebook, Anna, an 18-year-old Romanian, lay on top of a train car. She stretched out a leg to get the ideal pose but touched an overhead wire. She burst into flames as 27,000 volts coursed through her body. She didn’t live to see her photo posted.

Selfies are everywhere. Fortunately, not many are as deadly as Anna’s, but most are intensely irritating and very public. Why do people think others are so interested in their badly-centered, unfocused portraits?

Taking selfies is a narcissistic habit that only feeds our desire to be the center of attention. It also reveals a lot about our lives and where we are at any given time. Planning a vacation? Hold on to those selfies to post when you return. Or you might just return to an empty house.

Doorbell cameras like Ring and Nest are one of the newest developments in the ever-growing world of smart devices. Tiny recording devices face out of people’s doorways, constantly monitoring. Motion sensors scan to see if anyone comes near the home, logging every time someone pushes the buzzer.

Of course, the companies that sell these devices claim that they play a vital role in home security. But others are much more skeptical. They argue that the systems are capitalizing on a growing social paranoia, that their surveillance is an attack on people’s privacy, and that the practices of these major tech corporations are anything but trustworthy. Here are ten ways they may threaten your security.

10 Big Business Is Collecting your Data

It’s no secret that most, if not all, major tech firms are constantly harvesting people’s data. There’s big money to be made in tracking all our personal information. Social media sites, streaming services, messaging services, they’re all at it. And doorbell cameras are no different.

So exactly what information do these devices have access to, and how much do they store? Well, it’s a lot more than many users realize. Let’s take Amazon’s Ring, for example. There are the usual things like name, address, payment information, and Wi-Fi access. But it’s doorbell activity too. After a BBC information request, Ring revealed that they keep a record of every time the bell is pressed. Whenever the camera detects motion or a user zooms in on the footage, they log that as well.

But what about the privacy of people passing by? That’s where it gets trickier but also arguably more sinister. The devices aren’t always filming, but they can be triggered by movement up to 25 feet (7.5 meters) away. This means that anyone walking past having a conversation could be unknowingly recorded, and Ring would then have access to any of that footage. Tests by Consumer Reports showed that Ring devices can pick up audio from a distance of 20 feet (6.1 meters).

“Ring impacts everybody’s privacy,” explains Matthew Guariglia from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). “Most immediately, it impacts the people who walk down the streets every day, where the cameras are pointing out.”^[1]

9 Hackers Issue Threats and Racist Abuse

In December 2020, dozens of Ring users filed a lawsuit after their devices were hacked. They say a lack of security left them open to blackmail, death threats, and racist abuse.

There are many examples of hackers infiltrating smart doorbells to harass or intimidate people. One user, a vulnerable older woman, heard a voice saying to her, “Tonight, you die,” and was subjected to sexually abusive remarks. She had been in an assisted living facility at the time. Her family had bought the smart camera to keep an eye on her. But the incident left her feeling too unsafe to stay there. In another case, a mother alleges that hackers played music from the horror movie Insidious to scare her children.

The suit includes complaints from more than 15 families, who all have similar experiences. They claim that Ring “blamed the victims and offered inadequate responses and spurious explanations.”^[2]

8 LA Police Infringe Upon Right to Protest

In 2020, a wave of Black Lives Matter protests swept the U.S. following George Floyd’s murder. The movement drew a range of responses, from vocal support to fierce criticism, as did the police. But in the aftermath, the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) faced particular criticism from privacy campaigners, who accused the force of using doorbell camera footage to crack down on people’s right to protest.

The EFF made the claims against LAPD in February 2021. After the protests, police contacted residents and businesses and asked if they would share footage to help them investigate alleged crimes. A spokesperson described their actions as “not uncommon.” But EFF argues that this surveillance is an attack on the privacy of the protestors, the majority of whom acted peacefully and within the law.^[3]

7 Ring Staff Access Private Videos

In January 2020, Amazon’s Ring once against found itself at the center of controversy when it emerged that staff had accessed users’ private videos. Five Democrat senators contacted CEO Jeff Bezos a few months before asking about the company’s security practices. They asked various questions about customer privacy, including why the staff at the office in Ukraine had access to customer footage.

In their response, Ring admitted to investigating four staff members for inappropriately accessing customers’ videos. Although the company found that the employees were within their right to view the footage, they “exceeded what was necessary for their job functions.” All four were fired.^[4]

6 Spying on Delivery Workers

The rise of doorbell cameras means that delivery workers are now subjected to invasive monitoring by customers. So say tech institute Data & Society in their report “At the Digital Doorstep.” “The result,” the team goes on to say, “is a collision between the American ideas of private property and the business imperatives of doing a job.”

Delivery workers, the institute lays out, are one example of the ever-growing gig economy. Workers are not hired as employees but treated as independent contractors. According to delivery companies, this offers more flexibility and independence. But the institute argues otherwise. “These marketed perks have hidden costs: drivers often have to compete for shifts, spend hours trying to get reimbursed for lost wages, pay for wear and tear on their vehicle, and have no control over where they work.”

The team says that the on-the-ground reality is delivery workers are pressured to perform increasingly unsafe staff in the name of productivity quotas. Smart doorbells, they found, only make this worse. According to their report, customers with video monitoring are more likely to report delivery drivers—either to tech firms or the police—or shame them by posting the footage online.^[5]

5 Violent Customers Open Fire on Innocent Woman

Smart doorbells threaten the safety not only of customers but passers-by as well. This is particularly true if the user happens to be prone to extreme and unwarranted violence.

In October 2022, a man in Florida received someone else’s medication that had been sent to the wrong address. So he went to the apartment of Gino and Rocky Colonacosta and dropped the prescription by their front door. This triggered an alert from the video camera of their phones. The Colonacostas’ response was, in the words of Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd, “crazy.”

The pair, armed with .45-caliber handguns, went out of the apartment and began looking for an intruder. What they found was a woman sitting in a car nearby checking her phone. Gino, 73, pointed his gun at the vehicle and told the woman to get out, at which point she drove off in a panic. The father and son opened fire on the fleeing woman, firing seven rounds at the car. “Our victim was that close to death,” Polk told reporters, “And certainly, had there been a baby in the car seat, the baby would’ve been killed.”^[6]

4 Software Issue Leaves Doorbell Footage Vulnerable

Google Nest encompasses a range of smart products and devices, including doorbell cameras. In 2020, one user looked over at her central Nest Hub and saw camera footage from a front door. The only issue was she didn’t have a smart doorbell, and the porch on screen was that of a stranger.

Yes, a software issue gave the Nest user accidental access to another person’s doorbell feed. Her husband posted about it on Reddit, asking if anyone knew whose Nest system it was into which they had suddenly gained such obtrusive insight. As you can imagine, many of the commenters were concerned and puzzled. Another Reddit user, believed to be a Google employee, agreed to address the problem. But other than that, the company made no statement about the error.^[7]

3 Woman Sues Neighbor for Invasion of Privacy

A man in Britain may have to pay £100,000 ($120,000) to his neighbor after a judge found that his smart doorbell was too intrusive and infringed on the neighbor’s privacy.

John Woodward, a 45-year-old audiovisual technician, living in Oxfordshire, first got the device in 2019. His car was almost stolen, and he wanted to increase security around his house. However, his neighbor, Doctor Fairnhurst, claimed otherwise. She said the doorbell camera put her under surveillance, filming and recording audio of her house, garden, and parking space.

And in 2021, when the case made it to court, the judge agreed. Melissa Clarke found that Mr. Woodward had violated several British laws, including the Data Protection Act 2018, the UK General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and Common Information Coverage Law.^[8]

2 Ring App Raises Concerns

We’re back with the Electronic Frontier Foundation for this next entry. Along with their report on delivery worker privacy, in January 2020, the group took umbrage with the Ring for Android app, which they say could be monitoring users.

An investigation uncovered that the app often shares personal user information with third-party trackers. This includes names, IP addresses, mobile network carriers, and sensor data. They explained that although many apps share data, Ring stood above the rest for the number of trackers. Ring was also accused of understating the level of data collection on its website.

“Ring claims to prioritize the security and privacy of its customers, yet time and again, we’ve seen these claims not only fall short but harm the customers and community members who engage with Ring’s surveillance system,” said Bill Budington, who authored the report into the doorbell app.^[9]

1 Sharing Private Information with the Police

Perhaps the most controversial news story to emerge in recent years about Ring is about sharing footage with the police. In the first half of 2022, the company allowed authorities to view at least 11 recordings without the owners’ permission.

The information came to light after Senator Ed Markey raised concerns about Ring’s surveillance practices. As the company explains, police cannot access footage unless the clips are posted publically or shared with them directly. The letter to Senator Markey was the first confirmation that Ring share information without users’ consent.

Amazon stresses that they only share footage without a warrant in emergencies to prevent death or serious physical harm. They say they only intervene in cases like kidnappings or attempted murder. However, privacy campaigners are disgusted by the revelations, with some going so far as to accuse the company of creating a civilian surveillance network.^[10]