According to Freedom on the Net 2016,67 per cent of all Internet users worldwide are under surveillance. The survey covered 65 countries, accounting for 88% of the global internet population. According to the report, 27% of all Internet users live in countries where people have been arrested for publishing, share or even liking Facebook. The development of the Internet of Things, i. e. devices for everyday use that have not been connected to the Internet so far, is conducive to increasing surveillance.
Terrorism is one of the main arguments to justify surveillance activities. This is not just about cyber-terrorists, but also about terrorists who use the Internet to communicate with each other. According to the so-called Twitter transparency report, between August 2015 and December 2016 the portal closed more than 636,000 terrorist-related accounts. More than 376,000 accounts have been suspended for promoting terrorism.
In addition to surveillance by secret services, companies themselves are increasingly monitoring every movement, mainly for advertising and marketing purposes. According to a report by investigative journalists from ProPublica, Facebook offers 29,000 individual categories to its advertisers based on the collected information. In this way, it provides them with a narrower target group among more than 2 billion users. Among the categories of products offered to advertisers are "people in households with income between USD 100,000 and USD 125,000" or "the total value of liquid assets to invest between USD 1,000 and USD 25,000".
It is worthwhile to focus on the possibilities of defence or prevention in order to remain anonymous, it is sometimes worth considering what our online activities look like. I am thinking, for example, of our activity in social media and how we use mobile applications. We often install mobile applications without paying attention to the privacy settings there. We should be more suspicious when using apps, websites and throughout our entire online business,"says the expert.