How Private Are You Online? What Information Do You Share About Yourself?

Privacy has become a prominent topic in academic and social debate throughout the country. In “Term of Service” by Jacob Silverman, Silverman argues that American citizens today are unaware that their private information is often shown and are no longer safe from the public eye. After all, the integration of social media such as Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and Twitter has made it impossible to keep anything private. Sharing life events on social media has become the new social norm in the United States. However, this new trend has left the online community with a false sense of security, leaving them venerable against data mining, profiling, and unknown surveillance issues by third party miners across the country. With no end to this threat, how can causal social media users defend themselves without any assistants? The federal government should adopt stronger privacy laws like they have in Europe. They should come up with a digital bill of reforms to help better protect the online community, better inform the public about data mining threats, and companies should get government approval for any data retrieval before they are used for financial gains.

Private information that was previously segregated now becomes easily accessible to employers, colleagues, recruiters, and clients, among other perhaps unintended audiences” (Abril, 2012, para. 4). Yes, most social media sites attain privacy settings but one must always remember there are hiccups in everything on the internet and no guarantees leaks will not occur.

In his essay, “Get Over It,” Jeff Jarvis argues that “ . . . our supposed privacy crisis, . . . could result in our missing many of the opportunities the net affords to connect with each other and with information” (430). On the other hand, Andrew Keen, in “Sharing is a Trap,” states that “. . . this increasingly ubiquitous social network . . . is invading the 'sacred precincts' of private and domestic life” (426). With all the posting, tweeting, and blogging privet lives have become open to the public. SMS, emails and even calls are being traced, recorded and reviewed every day, you are not safe on the internet. Keen’s argument regarding social media is valid in regard to the transformative nature of the Internet, privacy and “publicness.”

Acquisti, A. & Gross, R. (2006). Imagined Communities: Awareness, Information Sharing, and Privacy on the Facebook, Proceedings of the 6th Workshop on Privacy Enhancing Technologies, Robinson College, Cambridge University, UK.

There is a rising dominance of social media sites that allows users lives to become increasingly transparent. With full information about ones activities available for everyone to see, it blurs the line between personal and impersonal information. Personal information like where you were, and your private life information are now things that everyone feels free to share, and by doing so dismantling the boundaries of personal information.

Privacy is a topic that has impacted this new generation more so than others, and more than likely will continue to do so. It has been the source to much controversy and issues in the past decade. Additionally, it seems like privacy is only becoming more of a hazard rather than a blessing to users of social media and modalities of communication. Therefore, underscoring this topic and examining its effects, will possibly lead to an understanding of the rise and potentiality of this sensitive subject. Moreover, in some form or another, people have stumbled across this topic and that is why it is crucial that it is addressed, so that people can have an understanding of the problem.

An example of one of these social media websites is FaceBook, or FakeBook. I actually have an account on this site but I don’t post my whole life on there, I occasionally will post a photo or like stupid pictures, but nothing too personal. However, my cousin, will post everyday of her life on there, including here whereabouts that day.

Social Media is a current way in which people are using to interact with one another daily. Since the launch of various Social Networking Sites (SNS) its been a huge attraction in a new way to share information with others and correspond with interests of your choice in many different forms. Although social media sites allow users to share information with friends and other sites on the internet, many people are unaware of how their privacy is getting out. Now that the expansion of global connection through these social media networking sites are so highly present in todays society, giving us easy access to information, the lack of one's privacy is being diminished. Everyday peoples privacy rights are

When we are just wandering social media pages we often think why would a hacker try to steal my information ,but more often then not they do not care how much you got but how much they can get off your name. Hackers are not the only ones that can gain access to your information. Many companies can be forced by law to hand over your private information to authorities ,that is a loss of privacy. "The social network itself may also try to access your email address book to invite your friends to join the the network too. in other cases, a social network may be obliged to hand over its user account information to a government agency which is also a loss of privacy" as said by Hadely Jones. To combat this intrusion of privacy you can keep your social security number secret, only add people you can trust, and useless information to begin with.

The website that gave away the most information was one that I added it in all myself, LinkedIn. It included my entire work history, photos and education history. LinkedIn seemed like a great networking website, but over time I learned that it leaking information to other sources. I don’t believe the networking opportunities are worth the breach in information security and I will be deactivating my account. It is easy to trust a social media site but it is important to remember that the information that we add to website doesn’t always stay where we input

With a click of a button any picture, message, video a person posts is allowed to be viewed by millions of people on social media Once someone posts something on the internet or on social media it is there forever. It is very easy for someone to access someone’s information because it is most likely all on the internet. It use to be that people would have find information in a book or newspaper. Or use a phone book to find where someone lives or their phone number. Nowadays, anything can be found on the internet with just a click of a button someone can even find themselves on the internet even if they never posted anything. With all this in mind it leads to one simple idea that can found information about a person. Some may argue people

Stephen Hawking, a well-known scientist and researcher once said, “We are all now connected by the Internet, like neurons in a giant brain”. In other words, he meant that the internet is helpful to us, in every way, from getting the information around the world to getting connected with everyone. The world today is an age of internet where there is life in and outside of the web. The internet is very powerful and convenient, so that it has become an inevitable part of the Americans. On the other hand, it is not a very good thing when the big corporations and the government use it to spy on the consumers and use it as marketing tool. The online privacy and safety is a major concern in

Sharing your personal information on social media site is not a good idea. Why? Due to the problems that have occurred, many people think that they can trust the internet and share their information when really they are wrong. Once people share their information on social media sites they are potentially inviting trouble for them, this would give another user a chance for stealing their information. However, the social media site can be used in a good way, with positive purpose.

We exchange personal information for sheer ease of use and more personalized services. This is the kind of exchange we readily approve of on the internet on a daily basis. Accepting the terms and conditions of the privacy policy agreement of say Facebook or Google; gives them access to your preferences and interests leading to a more enriched and involved user experience. We seldom think of the implications of just handing over the access to our personal data especially on the social media but computer scientists and policy experts believe that such innocuous bits of self-revelation can be amassed overtime and reassembled by computers to help create a picture of a person’s identity.

The public nature of online profiles creates security risks about which most users are unaware. Cybercriminals can gather information to be used for identity theft from social networking profiles, such as birthdays, pet names, mothers ' maiden names, names of children, and other details often used in passwords and security questions. Offline crime may result from posting personal information, like home robberies committed after a person announces vacation plans and alerts criminals when the home will be left unattended.