We’ve all no doubt seen or heard the news lately about privacy issues relating to Facebook (and other social networking sites); this is a timely reminder to all of us to think about what information we are sharing, and if you’re a parent, think about what your children are sharing.
What’s happening with our private information?
In New Zealand a recent Privacy Commission survey found 45 percent of us were willingly putting personal information on social media websites. Most people think that they are only sharing this with the online ‘friends’ – but that’s not the case, personal information, or any information you are putting up on the online world is available to complete strangers, people you have no direct connectio
n with.
In response to Google and Facebooks comment that “privacy is dead”, our Privacy Commissioner, Marie Shroff says “I think that’s a premature death notice”. Ms Shroff has joined with other to form the Global Privacy Enforcement Network to defend personal details.
We all need to be mindful of what we post and share on the internet, particularly where it concerns children; we as adults are able to help ourselves; but we have a duty of care to protect children, so being mindful about what we share about ours and other peoples children is important.
Others areas of concern is the notion that social media is free; in some ways it is, it is free in the sense that you no direct financial outlay for using it; however it does cost in the sense that the information you are giving, sharing, is infact being captured and being used by social media sites to gain information about your habits, hobbies, interests; we are sharing this information (often) without our intention to do so.
When you complete profiles you are giving this information, presumably to enable you to connect with likeminded people; however social media sites are in turn using this to ‘sell’ the notion of advertising to advertisers wishing to use these same sites to target people like you.
All the personal information you put in your profile is collated and is then able to be used to allow these advertisers to target their advertising at the ‘right’ groups of people. Is this why you shared this personal information?
Not onl
y should you be mindful of what you put in your profiles, you should be mindful of what personal information you post on your social media sites; don’t give too much away. Remember, what’s said on the web stays on the web; and may one day come back to haunt you.
The recent introduction of the Facebook Like button as a web wide personalisation tool has made many avid social networking users take another look at how information is being shared.
Facebook privacy settings are automatically set to share so you need to go into your account settings to ensure a more private experience.
The new personalisation setting can be found under privacy settings, applications and websites. It will by default be enabled, if you don’t want your information to be more accessible deselect the allow box within the instant personalisation setting.
If you want to know just how far your information may have travelled check out www.spokeo.com type in your name or email address and see what comes up.
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Posted in Blog | May 17th, 2010. Author: SocialMedia@TWC
