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Social Network Users Have Ruined Their Privacy
Steve Kerrison writes "'There's little point in worrying about ID cards, RFID tags and spyware when more and more people are throwing away their privacy anyway. And the potential consequences are dire.' I've written an article on the dangers of social networks and how many users seem to forget just how public the information they post can be. This follows a warning sent out by the CS department of Bristol University, advising students that they risk lost job opportunities, getting in trouble with their parents and more, if they don't take care. The warning, however, really applies to all social network users, be they college students or over-zealous blog posters."
There is a difference between throwing your freedom away, and having it taken away against your own will.
While the consequences may be as dire as you claim, this is not certain. Even if true, it may still be rational for people to tell all on the web.
In the mid nineties a friend of mine who was putting a game-theory heavy education to work as a top notch security consultant claimed that we had passed a phase boundary and that privacy was essentially dead. At which point he started "living publicly," doing things like making his daily schedule (in detail) available to the world, sending all his receipts (for everything) to the IRS,etc.
When challenged on this rather odd behavior, and asked what he was trying to prove and to whom, he replied that he wasn't trying to prove anything to anyone except perhaps himself. His thinking was that having no privacy isn't nearly as bad as having no privacy and not coming to terms with that fact. He then walked us through a few cases (such as blackmail) and showed whywhen you were better off not getting in the bind of acting as if you had secrets when in fact others knew them.
Perhaps the MySpace people are at least subconsciously reacting in the same way to the growing threats to our privacy--by getting it all out there, so if anyone tries to use it against them they are effectively immunized.
--MarkusQ
>> Where are the safegaurds?
With the parents, of course. Adults control the world children live in, right? Once your kids are adults
(and the transition to adulthood starts around age 8, earlier for the smart ones), if you haven't taught
them basic common sense (not common whatsoever IMO), then it's on you. We're supposed to limit
the ability of people to communicate with one another? Communication is, after all, what you make of it.
Maxim
Erosion of privacy is when personal details about your life are taken from you. It's when police chiefs talk about tapping everyones home or looking up library records without a warrant. If I willfully give away information about myself then I never did consider it very private then, did I? This crap about lost opportunities, while perhaps partially true in today's freakishly religious climate, will not be such an issue as these things become more common. This is absolute proof that the minority voice controls the world. Damn near everyone has to lie about who they are because they're afraid everyone else lives some higher "moral" standard and will look down on them. This is simply not true. Even the noisy types who push this false sense of morality on us hardly practice what they preach. As a global community develops and communication with the entire world becomes simple and cheap the world will shift as knowledge becomes free. You will no longer have to worry about losing your job because there is a picture of you with a joint on someones myspace page or your hair is dyed neon blue. The transition period will not be smooth, but I welcome the day. All this article does is beg us to continue living in fear of some invisible and nonexistent moral majority. I, for one, refuse.
It is already happening. The company I work for was founded by two young entrepreneurs that grew up in the age where knowledge was free and they learned that masturbation won't cause hair to grow on your hands or your dick to fall off. They learned that the D.A.R.E. cop that told them the story of the young man who died from ONE hit from a joint was LYING. They realized that nobody else they grew up with believed this horseshit anymore either. They only care about your skill and your work ethic. As the younger generations start to take back this world it will become a better place to live because of the global community and available, simple worldwide communication.
Do not fear it. Embrace it.
I used to have a friend whose name was Robert Smith. I felt sorry for him, having such a common name. In today's world, it has its advantages. Anyone trying to dig up dirt on him with Google is going to have a difficult job.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Sounds like more of a problem with your kids, frankly. The danger of sexual predators has been blown way the hell out of proportion...Your kid is still far more likely to be molested by someone you know. It's typical media scaremongering...The number of reported cases of actual assault/molestation are crazy low.
Might as well ask where the safeguards are at your local high school...The opportunities for trouble there are way the hell greater than on MySpace or similar.
The concern for privacy, however is much more real. You don't have to show your tits to be compromising yourself to future employers and current school administrators. I wish like hell I'd never started posting under my own name...I ought to change it, but Satanicpuppy has such a nice ring...
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Good grief we live in a culture of fear... How many young people have been damaged on Myspace? I know a few teens that spend lots of hours on the site, and I must say, they are pretty normal. But you know if one girl gets abducted out of the gazillion like her that are registered on Myspace it will be bloody HEADLINE NEWS!!!! How long have we had these stories of the big bad Internet? I feel like the producers at (major cable news network) are just hoping that there will be some sort of weird sexual predator mania with a million victims across the USA that propagates from the dark corners of Myspace just so they can say, "I told you so!"
The young people on this country that are in trouble are from impoverished households, have abusive parents or suffered some real life trauma that did not involve a website. They have problems not because of myspace.
Yea, spending your life on-line gabbing is probably not healthy, obviously, but relax folks. Tech-savvy, pop culture suburbanite kids are not the troubled delinquents of society.