Nov 03 2010
Privacy and Common SNSes
Privacy: do people have a right to complain if their privacy is violated on SNSes, when they have control over such privacy features?
Privacy is a huge concern for American citizens. We take drastic measures to protect our identity, our bank accounts, our homes, and our families. In a physical sense, Americans are very cautious with privacy. We install ADT alarm systems in our homes to protect from intruders.
Online privacy is different, and even though some people may take steps to protect themselves online, information can still become public if other people dig hard enough to find it. Whenever people decide to use online banking, social networking sites, or even search engines like Google, they put themselves at privacy risk. Browsing history is never really cleared, and privacy settings on social networking sites are constantly changing.
So, what do you do when your privacy is violated online? Arguably, it depends on how much you monitor your own websites and networking presence online. If you’re on Facebook everyday, chances are you are going to notice privacy violations much faster than someone who is on Facebook once a week.
Also, with social networking sites like Facebook, users have the ability to change their privacy settings from extreme to not extreme. Depending on who you want to view your profile, you can make adjustments.
But when Facebook comes out with a new feature, like the location feature that shows where you are when you log into facebook remotely from a mobile phone, privacy features are set to default so that everyone can see your location. Unless users specifically go into the location feature and turn it off, it will run, and show all other facebook users where you are located.
If you don’t use Facebook that often you probably won’t notice the location feature, and therefore, you won’t know whether to turn it on or off.
Bottom line is: on social networking sites, the user is responsible for their own privacy settings. If an online banking site, or an e-commerce site violates a user’s privacy the problem escalates, because the privacy has been betrayed by a corporation. With social networking sites, the user control of their own privacy settings.