Privacy Online?

Social networking sites, such as Facebook and MySpace, have become very popular with people in America and around the world. Sharing pictures, messages, videos and other interactive communication features have grown enormously, especially in the last 4 to 5 years.

Billions of people have access to the internet, which leaves the door open to absues of privacy. Online hackers, child predators and identity theives are a real and often overlooked danger in the online world. Taking this fact into consideration, many people still post personal material very carelessly on these social networking websites. An important fact to consider is that people post this material of their own free will. Many cases have been reported that as a result of certain personal information being revealed on facebook/myspace (such as photos of binge drinking or sexually explicit behavior), they were fired from their job. Employers, professors, and even high school teachers are looking up information on their staffs and students as a new form of background checking.

The lecture in class this week discussed social networking and communities. For example, we learned that Gemeinschaft oriented communities had more of a small town/closely related group feel because of the more solidified social bonds people develop with each other out of the implied trust in their neighbors. Gesellschaft contract societies follow the theory that people are individuals, and as a result of this are free to express their desire to attain personal happiness. Individuals in Gesellschaft are more likely to live in a city or a more urban area because they have isolated themselves and their social bonds in order to preserve their own goals and achievements.

Isolating stronger social bonds, yet gaining many weaker social bonds, is in a way what online and social networking sites are designed to do. Most of the population (at least in the United States) seek out these means of communicating and expressing themselves to trade their stronger social bonds (family, close friends) for Facebook comments and text messages. Technology is rapidly developing as vast amounts of information travels across the internet "super highway" every second. The physical world is interconnected with the online world now, so the same risks of the physical world still apply to the internet world when dealing with privacy rights.

People will most likely continue uploading personal information to Facebook, MySpace and other sites, but it may be at the cost of losing their own privacy.

http://www.cio.com/article/480020/Slapped_in_the_Facebook_Social_Networking_Dangers_Exposed