Privacy is essential to each and every
individual in the world. The need to seclude personal information,
whether sensitive or not, is something that we instinctively have and
is a main form of primitive protection to predators. Growing up, I
learned not to speak with strangers from my parents. The implication
behind these teachings more so on privacy of personal information
than on the actual act of speaking to strangers. While speaking to
strangers is perfectly fine, speaking about
yourself isn't and
it's rather a risk. So much of the information about ourselves can be
used by predators against us, yet today, there are so many traps and
new ways to expose our information. From the words of a the Steve
Rambam, “Privacy is dead, – get over it”.
When
we consider the concept of Internet privacy, we decrease the size of
the scope to the focus to data leakage to third-parties via Internet.
There are certain risks that, as an Internet user, we all need to
consider. These can range from data mining to malicious spyware. The
Internet, although mostly used in civilized ways today, can be
considered as a wild jungle, especially to children. This is what it
is like for the unlearned Internet user while browsing the web pages.
A single click could mean a simple ad, or the infection of an
internet bug or virus. With the development of IT and better internet
browsers, most of these risks have lowered in general. To further
protect the children from exposure to third-parties with malicious
acts the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act was created.
Further information on http://www.coppa.org/.
One
of the things that come with concerning risks come up when we speak
of privacy within social networking sites. Facebook, for example, has
terms of use agreements that states that all data uploaded into their
network is theirs until the user decides to delete them
(https://www.facebook.com/about/privacy/)
the potential consequence comes up when we consider the scenario of
data leakage. If Facebook has data of personal information of others
leaked out, these people will be vulnerable. Maybe the data leaked
will be used for advertisements (still a breach of privacy) or maybe
a predator will use it in his/her next crime. What we do know is that
the range of risk is very wide.
Even
though we are protected by privacy laws, but what if the individual
exposes his/her information to the Internet that is potentially
harmful to her. One example is the UCLA's Alexandra Wallace YouTube
video upload which has been taken down to for her protection (part of
it for privacy). But the fact is that this incidence will stay on the
web forever because of so many responses and links to her video. This
is one of the responses (the best one in my opinion)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zulEMWj3sVA,
and it was the least offensive as well. This ultimately resulted in
her forfeit of her studies at UCLA and hate mails directed towards
her after the video upload. People don't seem to realize how risky it
is to upload personal information or personal thoughts, or at least
that's my impression after taking notice of this case. This is not
the only case on YouTube of people posting personal
information/thoughts and sharing it with others without realizing the
dangers. These videos may be taken down directly, but once it is
uploaded to the Internet, it lives forever...
Even
now I can find the video link on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNuyDZevKrU&feature=related
(This is a copy of the original video; her YouTube channel and
original video were already taken down).
This
is why privacy is important, and it just shows why the Internet is
wild wild jungle. Internet users need to beware of the consequences
of exposing potentially harmful information – not just information
that may be harmful to themselves but also to others.
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