Private Life on Social Networking Sites Essay

Social networking sites fire be defined as an online platform where muckle create their sustain profiles, sh ar them with the public, and communicate with other substance abusers on the Internet. The increasing habituality of these sites affects our lives in umteen aspects and the most important one is the covert issue. It burn easily be observed that well-disposed networking sites argon a real threat for the users in-person privacy.First of all, on that point ar some threats arising from aegis vulnerability on fond networking sites. Generally, users give a lot of face-to-face culture to become a member of these sites and it is easy to access this study for hackers and identity thieves. For example identity thieves who could gain very cloak-and-dagger information such as birth name and date, addresses, phone numbers and affinity status on social networking sites provoke verify themselves as world the profile owner. Therefore, they can access the users credit card number and slide their property easily. Moreover, identity thieves cause not only loss of money but also loss of personal respect and bully name.They can use the information to communicate with users other friends in order to amaze their information too. Rebecca Sweeny (2011) summarizes that users lack of awareness of sharing information helps hackers and identity thieves to slue their money and damage good names. (as cited in Acquisti& Gross, 2006) The second threat arising from surety vulnerabilities is marketing companies availability to users information without permission. For instance, spamming the users with unsolicited advertising contents can be annoying in most cases. Further more than, the companies sometimes obtain personal information and spread them with other companies and individuals in order to make advertisements more effective.Secondly, people share very private information on social networking sites, as Nico Reiher(2009) mentions, If the receiver of the information is not trustworthy, the user does not grow a chance to track or remove this information back into trustworthy hands. causes some serious troubles. Firstly, people tend to announce where they are at that moment and what they are doing, therefore, they share real-time location base information on social networking sites. To illustrate, people who share their locations and especially advise others that they are not at home on social networking sites such as Foursquare, provide an opportunity to thieves to rob their houses. In addition, Facebook which is the most popular and preferred social networking sites, also enables people to share that much private information with the check-in application.Secondly, sharing awkward and embarrassing information or political take ins on social networking sites lead to trouble in peoples social and professional lives. For example, some companies prefer to look to social networking sites in order to get information active prospectiv e employees. tally to SNAPR project team, Even future employers,, may be able to view your posted information and draw specific conclusion about you as an individual, which could have the negative effects. Moreover, disgraceful posts on users profile which can be seen also by instructors or bosses will cause loss of reputation in educational or business lives.Those who are not in favor of this opinion seem to believe that social networking sites are invulnerable and information is inaccessible for the public. They think that there are some repressive privacy settings which allow users to specify who can see their information and profiles. Moreover, there are firewalls which help to prevent users information from hackers and identity thieves. Although it may be true to a certain extent, this claim is not strong enough, because these settings are not default without users knowledge. Generally, users are not fully informed about privacy issues and share all information without so me(prenominal) restriction.In addition, they are unaware of how much information they share to the public. There is not any explanation about the amount of the disseminative information. To sum up, the users unawareness of the privacy settings on social networking sites and their insensibility on this issue cause a lot of troubles. In addition, digital informations easy accessibility and fast spreading also pose a danger for users privacy. In order to prevent people from these threats, improving the privacy settings and informing them on the whole should be the major precautions.References Reiher, N.(2009). Privacy on social networking sites and its impact on computer-mediated communication. Retrieved April 9,2012, fromhttp//www.grin.com/en/e-book/154916/privacy- on-social-network-sites-and-its-impact-on-computer-mediated-communication SNAPR Methodology project team. Dear social networking user argon you at risk? Retrieved April 9,2012, from socialrisk.weebly.com/index.htmlSweeny,R .(2011). Social networking sites More harm than good? Retrieved April 9,2012, from http//networkconference.netstudies.org/2011/04/social-networking-sites-more-harm-than- good/