Privacy on social networking sites

Social networking is a wondrous thing for the netizens on the web. It enables them to easily socialise with one another efficiently with ease. For example, whenever a netizen likes a certain video, or an article online, they could easily share it their friends with ease on social networking sites such as Facebook or Twitter. This ease of sharing the netizens likes bonds the community of friends together in discovering one another’s common interests.

Sadly, because of this efficiency to easily share, and intrusion of privacy occurs where people could easily comment about what people feel at the time, also known as “Status Updates”. Because of this, some divorce cases around the world came about because of the Facebook status update system where spouses came to found out they got cheated on via the social networking sites. Some cases of workers getting fired from their jobs also resulted from what they posted out on Facebook where their bosses can see. However, other social networking sites such as Google + help solve this problem with it’s function of making social circles to choose which circle of friends would you want to share the information with.

With the inclusion on social networking sites. People are more willing to put in private information onto their pages like what community do they belong in, their age and sometimes their addresses and phone numbers. Because of the opportunity to invade other people’s privacy, fake accounts pop up everywhere, hoping to stalk on such accounts.

Sales-people also want in as well, for example, you receive a random friend invite from someone you don’t know. You accept it. Next thing you know, you are tagged in a photo displaying a set of clothing, a pair of shoes or a Viagra brand. This is one of the ways where sales-people take advantage of the tagging system on Facebook to display their products. Privacy is important and one must cherish it. For example, one of my friends whom I feel is a professional stalker has a crush on this female friend of mine. After being accepted as a friend on her account. He then proceeded to download every single picture of her onto his phone to swoon over her everyday every time he looks into his phone. All because of Facebook’s ability to download images that are not your own profile.

Back on the topic of easily sharing photos and videos with ease, this is also a pretty touchy subject as well. You see, one of my friends kind of like saw this photo that was on the web shared around with an emotionally touching description of how a boy suffered through cancer and beat it. A few days later, this system of sharing pictures has gone out of control with the fact that people are now sharing shock images like dead animals of the result of animal abuse with the mortifying description that we must do something about it etc. I’m not saying that this is a bad thing. But sooner or later, some individual or community will start to use this to spread unwanted messages or worse.

I feel that the government can’t possibly step into this matter of privacy on social Networking sites like Facebook or Twitter as the internet is such a big public area that isn’t easy to moderate altogether. What I suggest is that the government could provide awareness towards privacy in online social networking sites such as putting up posters or some PR event. The government can also work hand-in-hand with the social networking sites themselves. Like how Britain and Facebook tried to work together to prevent underage Facebook account generating. Therefore, I feel that in order to prevent cases of such privacy issues, awareness of such privacy problems need to be made with the public using social networking sites.