Eradicating Surveillance and Privacy Intrusions with Stegos 

A need for Privacy

It is not something hidden that many internet related business ventures are forced to submit the data of their users to the respective governments of the countries they operate. There was a time that our own John Mcafee argued with Apple CEO, Tim Cook on CNN over the company decision to release the key of iPhone smartphone to the government over an investigation, a move John Mcafee and many others widely go against.

I still can't forget the time when iCloud was hacked and many private contents which includes images, videos, documents and many other are revealed in public which is not suppose to be so.

Recently, Google openly say on live TV that their employees can access the email of user in their backend without the permission of user.

The scrutiny and suspicious of Facebook by its users and government agencies will continue since the scandal of Cambridge analytical and their own admittance of spying on even non users. Nobody trust Facebook again and this is even the main reason why they are having issue with launching their Libra.

The hack of Equifax and many other big hacks are still fresh in my mind, billions of dollars has been lost to hacking and many data that shouldn't be in the public has been revealed.

The founder of Wikileaks, Julian Assange who revealed many cankerworms about CIA has been indicated and he is facing extradition to the US from the UK. Edward Snowden has banned himself into exile because of revealing the secret spying program of American government that he once worked for.

The list is unlimited.
Freedom of speech, expression and freedom of privacy are basic fundamental rights of every human being.

The Internet of today is built in a way that users won't be able to have full control over their privacy and there's no where to run to unless you are not using the internet, from tracking of cell phone by Telcom, to pixel tracking by Facebook, to tracking by google and other websites, and also to tracking by government institutions of overall activities of people online.

Privacy is not Free

In developing countries, low income citizens share things that are very important to us among each other, this includes living space, toilet, bathroom and even kitchen. This lead to a lot of things which they are exposed to which are harmful to their well-being and all these could be avoided if they can pay for private home or residence. The illustration above gives reasons why privacy is needed even in our daily physical lives as it is needed in the cyberspace. The freemium business model of most of apps we are using exposed our privacy to abuse by owners of these apps who will want to get money from it by monetizing our data. Before the acquisition of what'sapp by Facebook, do they charged their users small fee annually but after its acquisition by Facebook, the app is now free but Facebook is working on a way to make money from it. Let's be frank with ourselves, you need money to build apps and websites, it cost money to keep them running and since users don't pay money to use most of this apps, they paid indirectly with their data.

Why do we need Privacy?

Some argue and say those who are against government surveillance are those who involve in crimes but I disagree with this, in this world we are now, their are discussions that we will not want some people to know about it.

Any right thinking man will not want his location to be in the database of some companies and government agencies. No one is happy when their activities on ecommerce website are being monitored.

Everyone of us is eager to access any information as it pleases him and share his views without having have to worried of being removed from the platform as it happened to many people.

Stegos: The Solution to Surveillance and Privacy Intrusions

Centralized based platform like Google and Facebook can't guarantee the privacy of their users because it will have adverse effect on their business and source of profiting. Instant messaging app developers must make money from their work and its maintenance also needs money.

The proposition of blockchain technology to instant messaging and payment is pleasing but there are still many thing to be done before they can be widely accepted. The statistics from the usage of decentralized applications is not encouraging and there are many reasons why it is like this.

Stegos blockchain privacy project is the one working to build a platform for messaging and payment that is fully private, the platform will also have a privacy App Store for privacy-based decentralized applications and a trusted application container for easy development and usage of privacy applications. Furthermore, the platform will also create a marketplace for their users to buy goods and services with their Stegos tokens. You can click here to read my well detailed article about Stegos.

Useful Links
WEBSITE: https://stegos.com
WHITEPAPER: https://github.com/stegos/stegos/wiki/Whitepaper-EN
GITHUB: https://github.com/stegos/
TWITTER: https://twitter.com/stegos4privacy
TELEGRAM: https://t.me/stegos4privacy_official

Written by Timileyin
My Telegram Username: @wavesprotocol