Websites owned by the federal government have helped people find medical services relating to AIDS. Recently these sites leaked information including sensitive data, like the identities of visitors of the sites.

People’s location data (longitude and latitude) was also transmitted.

The website’s users should sue for this breach of security, as their sensitive information could have potentially been obtained by hackers who could release it on the web.

Any website, but especially a federal one, should be encrypted to prevent any metadata from being leaked. This keeps people’s info safe.

What this recent leakage means is that the government doesn’t care if your personal data is seen by anyone.

In fact, the U.S. government apparently spies frequently, stealing people’s information for its own gains. So, in a way, it makes sense that federal websites would not enforce any type of protection measures such as encryption.

One government website had an option for users to activate encryption, but only for those who knew how to do it themselves.

This do-it-yourself mindset that the director of AIDS.gov had toward security purposes is wrong, as knowing how to encrypt is not easy, even for a someone who is tech savvy. Encryption is something that should be offered on all applications and websites. It is basic internet etiquette.

Not until this year did these federal sites upgrade to automatic encryption.

The government’s recent action of offering the option of encryption has pleased privacy advocates. But encryption software has been available for a few years. It is a really basic thing for websites. The fact that it took the government so long to get a simple thing such as this is astounding.

The government should have offered the option of encryption sooner. Then, maybe the information about AIDS website users would not have been leaked.

The more personal data leaked, the more companies can exploit people’s weaknesses. The more search engines can sell personal data to marketing corporations.

Currently many companies already do this with your buying preferences. They then give that out to advertising agencies who put out ads to you.

That is why after searching on Amazon, when you are on other sites that may or may not have anything to do with shopping, you may have many pop ups showing items relating to those in which you previously looked at.

This shows that your information is not safe; many companies and individuals are able to obtain it. Thus, it would be safer for all if encryption was more prevalent on websites.