Gomez- Perry 1 Daniel Gomez- Perry Professor Adam Padgett English 1102 7 April 2014 Social Media and

How it Affects Personal and Professional Privacy For 2 decades now humanity has been knitting a web of networks around the vastness of the world, trying to virtually link every single individual with the rest of the globe, the idea is to connect everyone through a single engine, a virtual location where people can share facts, ideas, hobbies, and communicate with others. This networking process is rapidly evolving into new ways; new sites are spawning, each new one more slick, more efficient, attempting to reach the culmination of all communicating success. The great benefits this progress brings with it are pushing humanity to strive to higher communication standards; progressively it is simplifying lifestyles and helping humanity advance into modernity. Habbo, then Friendster, MySpace came after, Facebook then spawned, Twitter following after. Each one growing more efficient, slick, and innovative. Connecting users around the world faster and faster, helping individuals reunite with long lost friends and family, connecting companies for quicker businesses, helping the press quickly spread information of current events: wars, political ordeals, or murders. All this social networking has pushed us to be an efficient world, communicating quicker and at longer distances. But even with this enriching and fulfilling progress many problems have also risen. With the ability to share information with anyone, negative repercussions tend to settle. This openness can lead to privacy issues with individual users; subsequently they have hurt many individuals privacies, both personally and

Gomez- Perry 2 professionally. These issues have shaped many individuals lives drastically creating a difficult environment to live in. Shouldnt these social networking sites search for a solution to this problem? With great effort, humanity has dedicated itself to sew this enormous web of complex communication networks; if these privacy issues are threatening its users then there should be more concern into finding solutions to fix these threats to privacy. Particularly Facebook has been a targeted network with cracks and holes filled in their privacy aspect. They have been charged with harsh privacy defects, and were subsequently categorized as the second lowest site for substantial and comprehensive privacy threats, by an organization called the Privacy International. (Debatin , Lovejoy and Horn 84) This charge was based on the matters of data matching, transfers made to companies, and above all they were matters of gathering information about the users. Although Facebook is a great site to share personal data with others it is also filled with privacy threats that can affect any of its users. One would generally think that whatever we place on Facebook can only be seen by our families and friends, but with a few changes in computer coding the privacy of the information can be sent anywhere. For example Facebook has consciously put private information such as private photos, credit card numbers and medical test results into the wrong individuals hands. (Andrews) This can certainly affect a persons private personal life, it can create problems with what should and should not be posted online. For example a few years ago a middle school student was being investigated for posting a threat to kill another student in the school. (Nissenbaum 59) This demonstrates how the lack of privacy in social media sites can spread information that can threaten an individuals privacy, although the student was a

Gomez- Perry 3 delinquent in posting that on MySpace, he would not have been placed under investigation if the lack of privacy in MySpace were so accessible. This definitely shows how the government can use everything you post online against you. In a very simple example there was a case of public urination at a University, the police did not know who the perpetrators were and the only bystander was not able to recognize them. The culprits decided to place this on Facebook; subsequently they were discovered by the police and were each fined $145 and $195 for public urination and obstruction of justice. (Debatin , Lovejoy and Horn 85) This shows how Facebook and other social networks are badly managing their privacy settings and how people are getting in trouble for it. Posting online has benefitted the government greatly with attaining information from individuals, the government used to have to get warrants to find private information about people, now the government can just monitor Facebook posts and Google searches to obtain individuals information. (Andrews) This is taking our privacy rights away from under our feet. Even though the examples given were of people who did commit these crimes, what if an individual innocently posted information on Facebook this information could potentially incriminate the individual and be used against him. Not only can the government have their hands on your personal privacy online, but also it can be in other individuals hands that have bad intentions in using it. Criminals with your privacy in their hands is not a very good mix, this can result in very bad consequences. There is a new way of social networking that is not very mainstream but demonstrates how threatening social media can be. Foursquare, Dodgeball and Facebook Places are a few of them; their service consists with providing other users with the current location of the user. This can definitely expose many privacy threats to the

Gomez- Perry 4 users, who is to say theres no one else at home? Are burglars actively trolling social media trying to figure out who is where? (Young 75) Another example of how social media is exposing peoples personal privacies and threatening them is with a scandal that occurred a few years ago. Fitbit threatened the privacies of users. Fitbit is a portable device that tracks fitness by recording what the user eats and the calorie burning activities they commit themselves to. Once the user gets home the information is uploaded to a website that can be shared with other users. Sharing this information promotes competition within the users to exert themselves to exercise more. Some 200 Fitbit users were not aware that their information was being put online; a lot of very revealing and embarrassing information was exposed. Details about their lives such as breaking their diet to when the user had sex, this included the time it lasted and with the amount of effort they exerted could be found a Google search away. For example one of the users shared his sexual activity, its details said Active, vigorous effort. Started at 11:30. 1 Hour 30 Minutes. (Andrews) This proofs how peoples personal lives can really be affected, their dignities can be crushed, and subsequently their reputations can also be negatively impacted, just because social networks are failing to provide better privacy services. Another vital aspect of privacy that is being significantly threatened is the professional point. Many workers and students are getting in trouble or even being laid off or expelled for posting information on social media sites. These postings are usually unintentional but they have brought many problems for professionals and subsequently placed them in great amounts of trouble. For example in a research done for US medical schools in regards to posting unprofessional things online, there was a 13% proportion of

Gomez- Perry 5 students posting violations of patient confidentiality, posts using profanity accounted for 52%, discriminatory posts reached 48%, and pictures of students intoxicated accounted for 39%. This concerns medical school gravely; these proportions can negatively affect the portrayal of organizations in the public eye. (Clark 104) They can affect how people perceive the companys professionalism, the more social media lacks privacy the more it is exposing companies to bad professional reputation. Currently many employers have strict rules for e-mail and Internet use, but social networking sites are more different. They set different challenges, but should be addressed in a similar matter so employees are not put into threat due to the lack of privacy of social networks. (Clark 104) There is an example of a case in which a middle school teacher got in trouble for posting pictures of her consuming alcohol at a social gathering, a parent had allegedly seen these pictures online and had sent an anonymous complaint to the school. The teacher got in trouble for putting those online, the parent also said the teachers constant use of the word bitch online was an indication for why the parents daughter had learned that word and was constantly using it. The teacher got into trouble and was receiving a bad reputation for this situation. (Andrews) It was an uncomfortable situation for the teacher and she learned to be extremely careful with what she placed online. Even benign posts like putting a picture of friends drinking alcohol can place a person in trouble, if this is currently occurring social media sites should definitely take the initiative to fix this problem. A survey done in 2008 asked college admissions officers whether they had gone into applicants social networking sites, 10% said they had done so, 38% of that group said that viewing their social networking sites had actually affected their decision on

Gomez- Perry 6 accepting the applicant. One of the college admissions officers rejected an applicant who bragged for feeling that he had already gotten into the college, and also that he felt like he didnt want to attend that school. (Andrews) Another case for the violation of privacy and affecting future professional prospectives was with a recent college grad that applied for a job with a large talent agency. His interview was cancelled a few hours prior. They said that the student had pictures posted on Facebook of him drinking alcohol. (Andrews) This really demonstrates how social networking sites are really affecting the professionalism in workers and students. It is a grave matter that should really be evaluated and a solution should be found, because all these workers and students are exposing themselves, and sometimes it is not fair to lose great opportunities for benign posts online. Although humanity is almost reaching the summit of success with the evolution of communication there are still some lingering issues that should be looked at more thoroughly so individuals are not threatened in any way. A solution must be found to subside these issues, that includes privacy threats aiming towards personal or professional aspects. Humanity has to work together so these threats are eliminated. So these great innovations are not seen as a cause for negative repercussions but instead are recognized for their great aid on society.

Gomez- Perry 7 Works Cited Andrews, Lori B. I Know Who You Are and I Saw What You Did: Social Networks and the Death of Privacy. New York: Free Press, 2012. Print. Clark, JR. "Social Media and Privacy." Air Medical Journal. 29.3 (2010). Print. Debatin, Bernhard, Jennette P. Lovejoy, Ann-Kathrin Horn, and Brittany N. Hughes. "Facebook and Online Privacy: Attitudes, Behaviors, and Unintended Consequences." Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication. 15.1 (2009): 83108. Print. Nissenbaum, Helen F. Privacy in Context: Technology, Policy, and the Integrity of Social Life. Stanford, Calif: Stanford Law Books, 2010. Print. Young, Nora. The Virtual Self: How Our Digital Lives Are Altering the World Around Us. Toronto, Ont: McClelland & Stewart, 2012. Print.