Week 5 EOC: WSJ Privacy

I found the article very interesting, although I really take interest in some web advertisements before, they will be much more noticeable to me. This article really put into perspective how social media and advertising go hand in hand and they both need each other to make some sort of profit. How advertising agencies implement their ads is a little invasive to my personal taste though. While reading the article, I learned that some people really take the ads they see on their computers into consideration and it can affect them in negative ways. One women who said she was self conscious about her weight and wanted to lose 15 pounds would always see weight loss ads and that could have some sort of psychological affect on someone, although I don't think that’s what they research companies and advertisement companies intend to do. It was interesting to learn that companies stray away from sensitive topics such as STD’s and AIDS as well as eating disorders, but I think other sensitive topics such as income and the stated weight loss can get people thinking. I also found it interesting that consumers and people who regularly research on the Internet have a sort of “price tag” attached to them if they click on targeted ads and untargeted ads. Tying this into the Edward Snowden video, this is an invasion of privacy and any sort of information collected by these agencies are unwanted by the public. Although I understand the information collected is nearly harmless, companies are collecting data from you without your consent, and I believe that is wrong.