In light of all the information that's collected by the government, cybersecurity expert Steven Weisman says Americans willingly give even more information to companies such as Google and Facebook.
"It was kind of interesting when [Edward] Snowden was first disclosing how much surveillance was done on Americans through the government," Weisman told John Bachman and Miranda Khan on "America's Forum" on
Newsmax TV on Tuesday.
Story continues below video.
Note: Watch Newsmax TV now on DIRECTV Ch. 349 and DISH Ch. 223
Get Newsmax TV on your cable system – Click Here Now
"One of the things that was kind of missing was we're probably giving more information and being watched more closely by companies like Google and others who are collecting data on us, and in many instances, we've actually agreed to it," he explained.
"We may not realize we've agreed to it, but if you look at the fine print . . . we actually give them permission to use this big data really across the board for marketing purposes," he said.
The former NSA contractor said in an
interview with The New Yorker published Sunday that companies like Google, Facebook and Dropbox are "dangerous" and that Americans should consider "dropping programs that are hostile to privacy."
"Apple with the cloud has a dual authentication option that many people don't take advantage of that they really should that would make things much safer," Weisman said.
"After Snowden made his allegations, Dropbox did indicate that they do have encryption," he explained.
"This is one of the big things, encryption is critical today because there are so many places that our personal information can be grabbed by hackers," he said.
"We should have encryption — we should have encryption on our computers, on our laptops, on our smartphones — a lot of us don't even have passwords on our smartphones, let alone encryption," he added. "But we should."
© 2024 Newsmax. All rights reserved.