The topic of privacy and security is an important aspect to consider in CACM’s Viewpoints column. The author provides a good summary of the topics covered by this particular column in the past six years. Several prominent examples of privacy and security breaches from government agencies and companies are given as an explanation for the failing privacy and security grade in current times.

The author also points out that companies are increasingly collecting more information about users and decreasing their privacy online, but users in general are not concerned about the lack of privacy. However, the increasing use of privacy- and anonymity-enabling applications such as Snapchat and Tor show that users are interested in maintaining their privacy, but maybe they trust certain companies such as Facebook and Google more.

Providing incentives to improve security is critical, and a deeper understanding of privacy is needed before user privacy can be maintained. Security and privacy is also not just a technical or computer science issue; many other disciplines such as law, anthropology, and psychology need to become more involved.

Finally, the author points out that certain aspects of security and privacy might be getting worse (such as censorship), but other aspects are getting better (such as user exposure to the digital age). She then concludes that this column has done “reasonably well” in covering these topics and introduces the next editor.