Is Internet Privacy still Important?

In social networking sites like Facebook and Twitters, we can see status updates like ‘I am going to (*place name*) for dinner’ or ‘I had lamb shanks for dinner with (*someone’s name*). The rising of internet spams, scams and phishing sites did not worries the online community about the importance of privacy. How do Internet users draw the line between private information and public online information?

In the article, Is Internet privacy dead? No, just more complicated: researchers, Kang (2010) wrote that online users are beginning to get worried after gaining awareness about how some social networking sites publicly allows the display of that their personal information. Multi National Corporations tends to search for their employee’s name on Google and Facebook to verify their behaviours on the Internet.

The Federal Trade Commission has been pressurized by private advocates concerning consumer’s complaints about Google and Facebook’s alleged violation of user privacy (Kang 2010).

Protecting your own Information.

In the era of social networking sites blooming like mushrooms after rains, sharing information has turned into a social norm and ‘Facebook adopted the default public settings to reflect these social norms’ (Kirkpatrick 2010). In my opinion, Internet Privacy is not dead but users are not aware or smart enough to protect it from being abused.

Facebook.com

Following customer complaints in December 2009, Facebook underwent a high-profile privacy setting change that allowed users to control the availability of their information (Kang 2010). Facebook users can easily amend the privacy settings to allow friends only or everyone to view their personal information (Ostrow 2010). Even before an application is installed, they had user’s attention that particular application will reveal their personal information to public. Users can reject the application if they are not happy with their information being viewed.

Like what CEO of Google, Eric Schmidt said, "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place.’ (Kirkpatrick 2010)



References:

Kang, C 2009, Is Internet privacy dead? No, just more complicated: researchers, The Washington Post, viewed 10th June 2010, .

Kirkpatrick, M 2010a, Facebook’s Zuckerberg says the age of privacy is over, ReadWriteWeb, viewed 10th June 2010, .

Ostrow, A 2010, Facebook announces new privacy features, Mashable, viewed 10th June 2010