In the rapidly changing technological world, it is important that we look for a way to maintain control over our personal information. Protecting personal information has a vast number of importance. It helps to prevent hackers from getting access to unauthorized data, it prevents banks and other financial institutions from acquiring losses, it helps in preventing and reducing identify theft and finally and most importantly it ensures an individual’s personal life remains personal. There are many acts that make it lawful for us to protect our personal information. One act is called the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. The bill which is also known as HIPAA gives an individual the right to their health information. Under the act, a person can decide, set rules and limits on who can and who cannot receive his/her health information (Government, 2018). This law protects the information that your health care give receives about you. Information about your health, billing information and health insurance information are all protected under this act. Another act which protects private information is the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). FERPA protects the privacy of student’s educational records. This law gives parents or illegible students’ rights concerning their children educational records. Schools cannot disclose information about a student’s educational record to any outside party without the consent of the parent or the eligible student. Lastly, there are some rules that are in place to protect consumer’s financial information. The rules include Consumer Credit Protection Act that was enacted in 1968. The Gramm- Leach- Biley Act of 1999 and the Data Protection Act of 1998 (which is mainly practised in Europe) (Debt, 2018).
Response
It is true that the United States culture has been largely promoted with the existence of the First Amendment. It allows for the freedom of speech, the existence of such rights has made it possible for Americans to utilize their mainstream media and social media efficiently. However, the existence of such rights is not uniform across the globe. What the American people can consider free in their country might not be free in other countries. In countries such as China, the government limits application such as Skype and strains media outlets that might try to speak against the government. In other countries like Iran content that speak mainly about rights of women is always blocked out immediately from the internet. These are just examples that go out to show that online assessment of content changes culturally and globally. According to the post, there are varying factors that influence the online evaluation of content. An example is the type of content that is under consideration (true threats, defamation, etc.). Other factors include the cultural and financial background of parties involved, religion and geological location of the population involved.
