As the whole society grow, people are seeking for increasingly numbers of entertainment tools to pass their leisure time. In the past we have books, music, movies, and then Internet. In the very beginning of this century, around year 2004, the word “web 2.0” was brought out. People these days online enjoy interactive way of using the Internet. In the past people have Britannica Online, and now people have Wikipedia (Reilly 2005). According to facebook statistics page, there are approximately 500 active users (that is about 7 percent of the whole population on earth), and about half of then log on to the site everyday. While enormous number of people enjoy the “social benefits” that facebook and many other social network sites brought, there are lots of victims of these sites, due to privacy issues, and the situations are too serious to ignore in recent years. This essay will discuss the issue of Internet privacy of Web 2.0 sites, what are the problems, why it is such an important issue?
People using various social network sites as the platform to express themselves, users control their own data to make their profile page more personalized. To achieve this, one of the crucial parts is to give your personal information, as much as possible. Therefore an assortment of Internet service providers ought to have a large database on the subject of their users. Why this is a crucial matter for all the users?
As cited by Schaefer (2001, p.50):
There are bases for such fear. Late in 1999, 20-year-old college student Amy Boyer was murdered in New Hampshire by a stalker who tracked her down after buying her Social Security number from an Internet information broker for $45. Earlier, actress Rebecca Schaeffer was killed by a crazed fan who traced her through driver's license records sold by the state of California. These sorts of basic safety issues are now on their way to being solved by congressional bans on Internet traffic in such data.
That was the cases in the late 90s, but now, with the entire web 2.0 services, getting individuals information are no longer that challenging. For instance, on facebook there are a large number of “facebook stalkers”, getting people’s avatars are easy as it gets, if the privacy settings are slack, basic personal information are straightforward to obtain. On last.fm, all the songs users listened to be automatically recorded, with the precise ID3 tags and the strict time when the song was recorded, people are able to know what kind of music you interested, or maybe even music companies. Personal information that the Internet can provide are potentially intimidate, for instance, in certain extreme cases, murders and sexual harassments may take place, as acquire victims’ information are easier than before, all the contact details that victims put online for their friends are also available for criminals. As Internet communication are widely used in schools, students’ safety should always be concerned. The word “cyber-bully” is becoming familiar recently, teenagers may get deeply depressed being cyber-bullied, even commit suicide. Abused using of personal information online is a serious issue in this generation and should caught people’s attention (Internet Communication & Privacy, para. 2).
In 2010, 18-year old American student Tyler Clementi committed suicide after his video about having sex with another male being broadcasted online. This was done by his roommate. Serious privacy invasions related to Internet has already caused critical issue (Schwartz 2010).
Moreover, other than crimes, information on web 2.0 service websites are used as sources for various uses, such as, providing those information to third party advertisement companies, or even Government related organisations. According to last.fm privcy policy (Your privacy matters 2009, para. 6):
Your pseudonymous listening habit data will be available to other Last.fm users for non-commercial use and to third parties via our API for their own commercial and/or non-commercial purposes. This statistical information is used to help third parties understand the likes and dislikes of music fans on Last.fm.
The records of users’ listening history are available to third parties, it can be a threaten to ordinary users because, no one can ensure that in the future companies in music industry may accuse users for listening to music that is illegally downloaded, since the information are provided to them. Apart from knowing peoples’ music preferences, those data may be used in certain other ways. On facebook, there is a debate on the subject that whether facebook is a CIA front. This is mostly focused on a organization co-founded by CIA, IN-Q-TEL, and they can access to the database of facebook. It is hard to say there are no relationships between facebook and relevant Government-related organizations.
In conclusion, web 2.0 services are widely used by people in recent years, especially teenagers. The information online may cause serious issues such as cyber-bullying, or even worse case such as rapes, murders and suicides. Web 2.o internet service providers may offer users’ personal information to third party organizations as well for commercial and/or non-commercial purpose as well, users may need to be aware to this and put their information selectively on the internet.
References
What is web 2.0, viewed 13 October 2010, <http://oreilly.com/web2/archive/what-is-web-20.html>
Press Room: Statistics, viewed 13 October 2010, <http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics>
Your privacy matters, viewed 16 October 2010, <http://www.last.fm/legal/privacy>
Private Moment Made Public, Then a Fatal Jump, viewed 16 October 2010, <http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/03/weekinreview/03schwartz.html?_r=1&ref=tyler_clementi>
“Internet Communication & Privacy”, 2001, School Libraries in Canada, vol. 20, no. 4, viewed 21 October 2010, via ProQuest.
Schaefer, N. 2001, “The coming Internet privacy scrum”, The American Enterprise, vol. 12, no.1, pp. 50-52.
