Give me a little privacy

The notion of privacy is around three hundred years old and can be understood as protecting a mans business dealings and their family, but it is only within the last hundred years that privacy has been put into law. Privacy now days is culturally specific and therefore differs from place to place and law to law, first seen as a way to exploit workers, taxes and a shield for patriarchy, it is now, within the digital age, a rather liberal concept. With the advancement of technology, the ways in which privacy is protected, looked after and also breached have gone through many developments and changes also. The rise of the internet had allowed for an increase in the sharing of information and therefore an increase in ways that privacy can be violated. With the internet has also come concerns regarding the fact that computers are able to hold permanent records and therefore privacy may be compromised. In Boyd's reading ' Facebook's Privacy Trianwreck', the idea that technology is now making social information more accessible and therefore challenging society's sense of pubic and private by changing the pre-existing social norms. Using Facebook as an example, it has undergone many developments in regards to the level of privacy shown to users and also the level of privacy that is available to them. Facebook privacy issues is also a relevant topic nowdays when it comes to its effect on employment. Within the United States, many companies perform random checks on potential empolyees by viewing their social networking page, consequently effecting their decision as to whether or not they will hire them based on the information they gather on the internet. This has therefore produced a need to protect ones privacy settings in order to control your personal information and the way you want to be viewed by others.