Social networking issues

Submitted by Feargal on Mon, 31/01/2011 - 11:59
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The biggest change and issue for the Internet today is the rise in social networking. This allows users to tell others a constant stream of information about themselves. We think that this may be going too far as it also allows the Social Networking Sites to find out a lot of private information that people think they're sharing with friends but are actually sharing with the company as well. The privacy issues about this are really worrying. It is an invasion of personal space and leads on to other issues like how secure this data is and the implications if someone could access this data. For example, identity theft.

What could be done?

We think that it comes down to people themselves deciding how much information they want to provide and who they share it with. However, there also should be legislation restricting what data can be collected by a social network and what data can't be gathered by a social networking site.

Who should do it

People need to take responsibility for what they post.

Government should develop stricter privacy laws and produce guidelines for the public on social networking.

 

 

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Submitted by timdavies on Thu, 03/02/2011 - 16:42.

I think there might be two

I think there might be two other solutions that you've not raised:

1) Educate people about social networks - yesterday I was working with a group of young people in Coventry and they were surprised to learn about the Facebook pages feature and how different companies could target advertising to them and get such detailed statistics about them. If more education helped people to understand how social networks work - and what the alternatives to them are (e.g. send people photos by e-mail; set up your own small networks with friends) then perhaps some of the worst risks of over-sharing on social networks could be avoided.

2) Look for ethical alternatives - I've just been looking at the Diaspora project. It's fairly new and not very developed yet - but the idea behind it is to build a social network that leaves all the data it has entirely in your control.  I've got 10 invites to the service - so if you want to try it out - contact the HUWY team and I can arrange to send those to you and some friends so you can explore it...