Social Media and Privacy
Privacy, the state of being apart from company or observation as defined by the Merriam Webster dictionary, is a crucial topic in the ITGS course. Privacy settings protect the sensitive data belonging to millions of social media users, preventing unwanted information to be leaking out to the wide audience in the deep web. However, it is becoming increasingly difficult to shield our most sensitive information from unauthorised persons. With the introduction of features such as geotagging on Instagram and the Snap Map on Snapchat, even our location may not be private any longer. This post will look at how much our privacy settings can protect people, and how much of their private information might be leaking out to the general public.
In our technological era, privacy settings are the barrier between our information and the wide reaches of the Internet. They prevent our data from falling to the hands of people who wish to use it for malicious purposes. Albeit, they are not invincible. As social media applications develop, more features, including the ones aforementioned, are introduced and pose as a risk to our safety. For example, a stalker could easily obtain a child's location using these applications and is a situation that many would like to avoid. As a result, us as users must pay more attention to our privacy settings, as it requires our awareness to activate. On the side of the companies which develop these applications, it may seem that their only solution is to remove these features and perhaps limit the amount of information users can publish about themselves.
However, by allowing too much privacy, these companies pave the way for malicious persons to become completely anonymous. This extremity of privacy can be viewed as dangerous, as it allows people to commit crimes without leaving a trace of their identity. This could be detrimental to users, especially the youth, some of which may use as an opportunity to cyber-bully others. It is a finely balanced scale - not too much as to allow anonymity but just enough to prevent leakage of sensitive information. Nevertheless, it is the duty of these companies to protect the information of their users and to ensure that this scale never tips over in the near future.
In our technological era, privacy settings are the barrier between our information and the wide reaches of the Internet. They prevent our data from falling to the hands of people who wish to use it for malicious purposes. Albeit, they are not invincible. As social media applications develop, more features, including the ones aforementioned, are introduced and pose as a risk to our safety. For example, a stalker could easily obtain a child's location using these applications and is a situation that many would like to avoid. As a result, us as users must pay more attention to our privacy settings, as it requires our awareness to activate. On the side of the companies which develop these applications, it may seem that their only solution is to remove these features and perhaps limit the amount of information users can publish about themselves.
However, by allowing too much privacy, these companies pave the way for malicious persons to become completely anonymous. This extremity of privacy can be viewed as dangerous, as it allows people to commit crimes without leaving a trace of their identity. This could be detrimental to users, especially the youth, some of which may use as an opportunity to cyber-bully others. It is a finely balanced scale - not too much as to allow anonymity but just enough to prevent leakage of sensitive information. Nevertheless, it is the duty of these companies to protect the information of their users and to ensure that this scale never tips over in the near future.
Gianna T.
What a surprising perspective, Gianna. Adults often want social media to be very private, but you have brought out a very good point about how too much privacy can be dangerous. Thank you for giving me an opportunity to rethink my attitude about this issue.
ReplyDeleteI am Ms. Paciotti, a former middle school librarian and am your Edublogs mentor during this school year. I will be happy to help you with any questions you may have, although it appears you already have a good grasp of sharing interesting ideas.
Ms. P from Dallas TX USA