Online Censorship and Privacy

Cases of Online Censorship and Privacy

Online censorship

I will consider Internet censorship as a case that occurred in Ukraine in 2017. Ukraine belongs to the countries with free access to the Internet, where there is no technical censorship mechanism, such as the USA, most European countries and Japan. The introduction of online censorship in 2017 was quite unexpected, but there were a number of reasons for this. The National Security and Defense Council (NSDC) stated that the reason for the blockade was the dissemination by Russian services of criminal information about the territorial integrity of Ukraine and conducting of information campaigns through blocked resources that violate national security. Also, one of the reasons was the financing by these services of an attack on Ukraine.

Internet censorship in Ukraine was introduced by the Internet Association of Ukraine InAU by decree of the President of Ukraine of those days - Petr Poroshenko. It was done on the introduction of new sanctions against Russia, which came into force on May 16, 2017. The decree was based on the decision of the National Security and Defense Council (NSDC) "On Threats to the Cybersecurity of the State and Urgent Measures to Neutralize Them". The decree provided for blocking on the territory of Ukraine the services of the Russian holding Mail.Ru Group, Yandex, Russian social networks Vkontakte, Odnoklassniki and several other Russian services. It’s definitely impossible to say anything about a full-fledged blocking since all prohibitions can be easily bypassed. All modern technical methods of Internet censorship, even the Chinese Golden Shield, are very easily bypassed by setting up standard PC software (VPN, TOR, Proxy, etc.). 

This decree was originally planned for 3 years but was extended by the current President of Ukraine - Volodymyr Zelensky.

 

 

Privacy on the Internet

It has always been assumed that Facebook should be eavesdropping on a user's phone's microphone, but the company always denies this. However, the fact is that Facebook somehow knows the user's preferences. 

The thing is that Facebook collects information through trackers that are embedded in websites and apps. Developers use trackers to measure which pages users are navigating and what features they are using. In turn, Facebook uses this data to better target ads. Typically, the user gives permission to “spy” by clicking on the "Accept" or "Agree" button on the first visit to the page and some sites imply that the very fact of use already means consent to the collection of data. The social network can remember the following actions: launching a third-party application and logging into it via Facebook, viewing content, searching for an item in an online store, buying an item or adding it to the cart and transferring money to charity.

However, if the users are concerned about their privacy, then they can take several actions. For instance, a user can turn off location tracking, opt-out of personalized ads, turn off microphone access and install a reliable VPN.

 

 

Resources: 

https://inau.ua/komitety/z-pytan-zakhystu-prav-lyudyny-ta-svobody-slova/ofitsiyna-pozytsiya-inau-z-internet

https://rocketvpn.net/images/news/ok_vk_ya_mailru_closed_ua.jpg

https://www.hotspotshield.com/blog/facebook-privacy-spying-protect/

https://newstyledigital.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/facebook-spy.jpg