The Paradox of Internet Privacy
Friday, October 9, 2009 by carrie
Something about the ‘issue’ that has arisen with the internet and privacy stands as paradoxical to me. In the way I think about these two concepts, there doesn’t appear to be way that they can easily be separated. Choosing to have the former without the latter seems absurd. In ‘logging on’, we begin the process of creating a data trail, a trail which can be readily followed right back to your fingertips if someone so wished. Something we need to be aware of, in taking personal responsibility of actions on the internet.
Is it not the elephant in the room that the very nature of the internet is to see people and to be seen? We use it to our advantage, but develop paranoia when it may be taking advantage of us! When reading boyd’s article about the privacy ‘train wreck’ of Facebook, I couldn’t help but feel pity for those users feeling ‘icky’ over the advent of the ‘Live Feed’ onto the social networking site. And I don’t mean sorry for them in the way that they were now being more apparently exposed to their online ‘friends’, but for the fact that they assumed that certain level of privacy and trusted it. I think those who use social networking sites, and even the internet in general, need to have a degree of respect for what they are dealing with. The proliferation and prevalence of the internet in modern society, especially in the Western world in which we live, gives it a scope previously unimagined.
For this reason I do see how all users of the internet, not just younger audiences, can expose themselves in possibly undesirable ways on global networks. On Facebook, in posting a photo album and setting your desired privacy settings to only friends, for example, seems to allow your prerogative and control dictating the medium. But this still places your photos into the online world where even those that you trust can do with them as they so wish. We need to understand then, in this digital age we are living in, that the previously understood borders of privacy do not exist as long as we intend to submit ourselves on the internet. I like the imagery that boyd creates in her article of “architecturally defined boundaries” (boyd, p14) falling down around us as new technologies constantly change our norms of privacy online. Thus the actions one takes to remain private on the internet could need to be considered just as readily, as sharing private information with a stranger on the street.
Is it not the elephant in the room that the very nature of the internet is to see people and to be seen? We use it to our advantage, but develop paranoia when it may be taking advantage of us! When reading boyd’s article about the privacy ‘train wreck’ of Facebook, I couldn’t help but feel pity for those users feeling ‘icky’ over the advent of the ‘Live Feed’ onto the social networking site. And I don’t mean sorry for them in the way that they were now being more apparently exposed to their online ‘friends’, but for the fact that they assumed that certain level of privacy and trusted it. I think those who use social networking sites, and even the internet in general, need to have a degree of respect for what they are dealing with. The proliferation and prevalence of the internet in modern society, especially in the Western world in which we live, gives it a scope previously unimagined.
For this reason I do see how all users of the internet, not just younger audiences, can expose themselves in possibly undesirable ways on global networks. On Facebook, in posting a photo album and setting your desired privacy settings to only friends, for example, seems to allow your prerogative and control dictating the medium. But this still places your photos into the online world where even those that you trust can do with them as they so wish. We need to understand then, in this digital age we are living in, that the previously understood borders of privacy do not exist as long as we intend to submit ourselves on the internet. I like the imagery that boyd creates in her article of “architecturally defined boundaries” (boyd, p14) falling down around us as new technologies constantly change our norms of privacy online. Thus the actions one takes to remain private on the internet could need to be considered just as readily, as sharing private information with a stranger on the street.