Social Networking Privacy
Thursday, October 1, 2009 by gelise123
After last weeks lecture and tutorial on internet privacy, I immediately went home and disabled my old MySpace and Bebo accounts. Although I hadn’t used these sites for at least two years now, a quick Google search of my name revealed these sites were still “active” and, more worryingly, completely open for any casual stalker to peruse! Since I had been a user of these sites during my teen years, the information up there wasn’t necessarily information I’d like linked to me these days. I also checked my privacy settings on Facebook and made sure all information I have there is only available to “friends”. I did this because I use social networking sites only to interact with people I already know (not to make new friends), and I don’t necessarily want to the information I share with them to be available for anyone to see.
The recent increase of potential employers or educational institutes looking up people’s social networking sites may be slightly unethical, but is nevertheless something that a lot of them increasingly do. The problem is summed up nicely in danah boyd’s analogy of shouting at a loud party, only for the music to be turned down and everyone hearing what you say. While you weren’t necessarily relaying private information, you were intending the information to be heard by a specific audience – not anyone and everyone! The same goes for employers looking at Facebook sites. People who use sites like Facebook portray themselves a certain way to their friends, most likely in a different way to how they would present themselves to an employer. The information shared may be “public”, but is definitely intended for a specific “audience’.
The onus therefore is on the user to control his or her own privacy settings. If people are concerned about unexpected people looking at their profile, the individuals themselves need to do something about it. They also need to take into account that data put on the internet has a way of sticking around. So perhaps a more cautious stance should be taken before uploading drunken photos or posting risqué items to your profile. As for me, I will definitely be keeping a more careful eye on what I share online in the future – with social networking sites still being a fairly recent phenomenon, I’ve learnt you don’t actually know for sure how things could come back to haunt you in the future!
The recent increase of potential employers or educational institutes looking up people’s social networking sites may be slightly unethical, but is nevertheless something that a lot of them increasingly do. The problem is summed up nicely in danah boyd’s analogy of shouting at a loud party, only for the music to be turned down and everyone hearing what you say. While you weren’t necessarily relaying private information, you were intending the information to be heard by a specific audience – not anyone and everyone! The same goes for employers looking at Facebook sites. People who use sites like Facebook portray themselves a certain way to their friends, most likely in a different way to how they would present themselves to an employer. The information shared may be “public”, but is definitely intended for a specific “audience’.
The onus therefore is on the user to control his or her own privacy settings. If people are concerned about unexpected people looking at their profile, the individuals themselves need to do something about it. They also need to take into account that data put on the internet has a way of sticking around. So perhaps a more cautious stance should be taken before uploading drunken photos or posting risqué items to your profile. As for me, I will definitely be keeping a more careful eye on what I share online in the future – with social networking sites still being a fairly recent phenomenon, I’ve learnt you don’t actually know for sure how things could come back to haunt you in the future!