Privacy? Yeah right

I'm sure we have all googled ourselves, what hits do you get? Although I do not have many search results (because my last name is so uncommon) the search results that do come up all seem to result from facebook! There is a comment that I left on a fan page, my name comes up in association with people who I have friended, and there is a news paper article that I was featured in as well as my family members who share my last name.

The apparent lack of privacy on the internet is something that continues to amaze me. It seems daunting to think that I really don't have much control of the information about me online at all. Virtually anyone with a bit of I.T knowledge could unearth vast amounts of information about me not only from the social network sites I use but, from other websites I visit such as trademe, eBay, online forums, banking websites and so forth. Facebook, in recent times has been heavily criticised over this very issue. The Quizzes that we all love to take such as "What’s your ghetto name," "Will you survive a zombie attack," and "Who's your celebrity twin?" although entertaining are one of the biggest privacy traps ever. Applications and quizzes like these allow the developers access to all of your personal information and photos. More alarming still is the fact, that even if you choose not to take part in online quizzes developers can still get their manky hands on our personal info through our friends on facebook regardless of whether or not you have set your profile to private or not. Strangers, corporations or who ever can obtain anything they want about us and use our photos and details how they please. I would hate to think of how this information could be used in the wrong hands!

A recent episode of criminal minds dealt with this very issue. Although dramatised, the episode entitled "The Internet is Forever," dealt with the issue of a serial killer who stalked his prey on the internet by friending them on facebook. Through the victims posts, status updates, wall comments and photos he was able to obtain his victims address and learn their daily schedules. We may point the finger at social network sites such as Facebook for invading our privacy; however we as users share loads of information about ourselves freely and willingly! I would not be surprised if something similar in reality did occur as SNS would appear to be every stalkers dream and we do all the work for them!

Although there are many problematic aspects of the internet, privacy being one of them there are still ways we can minimise the damage and risk. Editing Facebook privacy settings can be a big help although it does take a bit of digging and effort. Further, we ourselves need to be more aware of the information that we post online about ourselves!