Privacy & Confidentiality

The advent of the Internet and technological advances has allowed new media to grow exponentially. New media has allowed us to communicate with each other more quickly and easily. Furthermore, people are so willing to post their information online for the whole world to see without a care in the world. Most people are not concerned with what they put on the internet until their privacy is violated. According to The New Oxford American Dictionary, Privacy is defined as “the state or condition of being free from being observed or disturbed by other people or public attention.” Many users believe that they can trust a particular social network to safeguard their personal information (information they were willing to give to the social network). However, in reality, the social network is aggregating information about each user to sell to third party companies. I remember a news story when this person requested the data that Facebook has about him. The news story was quite shocking as there were tons and tons of pages of information that Facebook has collected over the years about what that person has done. In addition, Facebook or other social networks often try to undermine the user’s privacy settings in order to make more information about the user available to the world. Another concern about privacy is that information can be leaked and distributed on the Internet without the owner’s consent often leading to cases of identity theft. Unfortunately, there is no privacy on the Internet as our information is always being collected by our internet service providers, search engines and social media platforms. Basically a warning to those who value their privacy: if you do not want anyone to see sensitive content or information about you in the public's eye, then you should not post sensitive information online as anything posted on the Internet will stay on the Internet.