Week1: Respond to content

Do we really value our privacy online?

Privacy is a common human desire. However, it is becoming too difficult to maintain privacy while using the newest forms of technology. In fact, privacy is a significant issue now facing most users of the internet. Most users of social networks like Facebook are unaware of the privacy laws that we automatically comply with when signing up to such a site. In fact, research shows that Facebook has essentially become a worldwide photo identity database. This allows people to not only be able to identity you in a crowd, but know your personal details (Mui 2011). People may question though, why complain about privacy if Facebook user's update status’s depicting where they are and what they're doing? Although this is correct, it’s becoming too easy for social network sites to expose private details without the user’s consent. For example, in 2008, a Twitter user, Orli Yakeul, with 650 followers, woke one morning to find their private, embarrassing messages exposed in the Twitter stream. It was a problem unable to be solved or explained by Twitter, however was to be blamed upon the confusion of “GroupTweet” (Privacy disaster at twitter: Direct messages exposed, 2011).

Social networks, such as, Facebook, have changed the way users of the internet feel towards exposing personal information, "...the sense of connectedness and intimacy cause users to forget the long term consequences of publishing information on the internet"(Van Eecke & Truyens 2010, p.g 535). These users - specifically teenagers - are too involved in their Facebook world, that the tools offered by social networks to protect user’s information are simply overlooked. With the added condition that most social networks set by default, the user's information to be public, and is rarely changed by the user (Van Eecke & Truyens 2010).

Not enough people are aware of just how easily our personal details can be tracked. But it is hard to debate such an issue, while thousands of users of social network sites are more than happy to state where they live, when they were born, and what they are doing online.

REFERENCE LIST:

Mui, C 2011, Facebook's Privacy Issues Are Even Deeper Than We Thought, Web blog, viewed 24 August 2011, http://www.forbes.com/sites/chunkamui/2011/08/08/facebooks-privacy-issues-are-even-deeper-than-we-knew/

Privacy disaster at twitter: Direct messages exposed: Update GroupTweet is likely culprit, 2011, viewed 22 August 2011, http://techcrunch.com/2008/04/23/privacy-disaster-at-twitter-direct-messages-exposed/

Van Eecke & Truyens, Computer Law and Security Review: Privacy and social Networks, Vol. 26 no. 5, p.g 535, viewed 24 August 2011, via Elsevier database http://www.sciencedirect.com.libraryproxy.griffith.edu.au/science/article/pii/S0267364910001093

Online privacy, n.d, image, viewed 22 August 2011, http://sylviamoessinger.wordpress.com/2011/05/04/h807-online-privacy-an-illusion-a10-1/