Online Privacy Paradox for Women
When it comes to women’s online privacy paradox, on one hand, they worry about their privacy leaks online while on the other hand, they end up actually sharing a lot online.
For example, women tend to share personal issues like family matters or relationships on social media platforms, which is different from men that tend to share their opinions about abstract things like politics. Another example, women more would like to share selfies than men online, which is dramatically common to see on social media platforms.
Sometimes, women share their privacy with little awareness. For example, a menstruation app is always used by women to record their period status. To smoothly use the apps, they’re required to fill in so much information about their age, job, medication, birth control habit, symptoms during the period, etc. and based on the daily recordings, more private information will be logged like how often they have a sex life or see a gynecologist. Worse still, the menstruation apps probably (that is common actually) share data to Facebook or other third parties so that they’ll be highly able to provide accurate and personalized ads to potential customers based on their preferences and mood.
Unlike the privacy disaster like women’s nudes sharing without consent, the privacy leak based on app logging is more secret and unaware since it takes place as frequently as apps are opened and used. All the data women users provide to app servers will be a Lego block that will finally form their online identities. As the data are combined with a user’s name, email address, or phone number, all the virtual information will be instantly connected with a real person in actual life. No one would like to challenge such an online risk.
After all, a data breach is a risk, but it’ll be a disaster when it really occurs to you.
Women’s Online Privacy Solution: Staying Anonymous
Staying anonymous online isn’t for doing things secretly but to avoid being secretly tracked.
Now that women tend to fall into such a paradox that they need the service provided by apps but always worry their privacy will possibly be compromised or even abused, a solution should be figured out, that is, staying anonymous online.
Keep in mind: Staying anonymous online isn’t for doing things secretly but to avoid being secretly tracked.
The internet is a virtual world unless it’s connected with the practical world. Staying anonymous online is beneficial to cut the relevance between the two worlds, which is able to finally protect privacy. Not just women, that works on all online users.
What type of personal information tends to be provided as women use the internet?
For online shopping:
- Name
- Address
- Personal phone number (if a second number isn’t available)
- Shopping preferences while browsing
For app services like menstruation tracking:
- Name
- Job
- Age
- Basic lifestyle
- Email address or phone number
- Period rules
- Period symptoms
- Birth control habit
- Sex life frequency
For social media platforms:
- Name
- Job
- Graduate school
- Age
- Preferences in all (that may be covered in the bio)
- Email address
- Personal phone number
- Gender attitude
- Relationship status
For online dating services:
- Name
- Age
- Relationship status
- Personal phone number (that is a must for registration)
All the data listed above doesn’t include the data women tend to share while using the services like their post content, conversation with dates, etc.
What does staying anonymous online mean, then?
To stay anonymous online means keeping all the intimate information immune to the virtual world. Think about it, what’s the use of getting a girl’s period symptoms if the girl is a virtual one? Nothing, right? It fails to be matched with anyone in the real world then it’ll never be a valuable resource for any individual or organization. Marketing ads fail to be shared and no profit can be earned. Useless, after all!
Therefore, all the information related to an anonymous person is useless and the solution to privacy protection naturally leads to staying anonymous online.
Equip Women with Weapons for Digital Privacy
How to stay anonymous online, then?
It’s not difficult to but to use some small tools.
Generally speaking, what matters most for the identification of an individual covers social security number, identification card number, or DNA information. However, the information isn’t commonly required online as an online service is used.
Then, what is commonly used for identification verification? Your email, phone number, or an account on mega apps like Facebook, Google, or Apple ID. Mostly, to register for the accounts on them like Facebook, Google, or Apple, a phone number is commonly required for identification verification. A verification code is usually required to provide to ensure the validity of a user. That is to say, a phone number is an identification card number for a person online.
On one hand, a phone number is owned by everyone. On the other hand, a phone number is never shared by two or multiple people and everyone has a unique one that can be used to distinguish them.
Sometimes, an email is usually used as a unique online identification verification but email has a low correlation with the real person. When a spam email arrives at the inbox, it can be either left unread or directly marked as read without really reading. If the email is used for online registration alone, it’ll be totally useless. It totally depends on the email owner how to deal with incoming emails. But it is completely different when it comes to phone calls.
A phone number is always with the owner and it’s usually correlated with other accounts on the Internet. In other words, an email can be “dead”, but a personal phone number is always “alive”.
Get a Second Number to Stay Anonymous Online
As a second number is used, it can be used for online registrations and plays a role as online identification. The identification in the real world will be well protected since it’s only provided to close friends, family, or official organizations like hospitals or banks.
- Personal Number: to family, friends, hospitals, or banks
- Second Number: to online registrations, used-for-once situations (like craigslist, second-hand order), online dating
Apart from digital privacy protection, a second number is also able to push business growth by being used as a business number. There is more than one reason to have a number specifically for business:
Being Focused and Professional
A business number is equivalent to being focused and professional. Whenever the phone rings with the business number, it’s easily known the call comes for business things. Then business-friendly or customer-friendly words can be used to leave a nice impression on the other parts, which is beneficial for the other part to be willing to further cooperate.
Balanced between Work and Life
A second number for business is also beneficial to balance work and life. As a businesswoman stays with family, all the calls from the business number can be directly ignored or set with voicemail so that the private life won’t be affected.
All in all, to protect digital privacy online, a second number can be well used as a useful weapon. Moreover, it’s also used as a weapon for women to uplift business and life quality.
