Social Networking Sites Privacy does not exist anymore - Essay Example

?Social Networking Sites –Privacy does not exist anymore Social networking sites are a platform through which people can communicate with others in the virtual world of networking. The social networking sites have been gaining popularity since the past decade and now have almost become a part of the daily lives of a large percentage of the population in every country. Students, working professionals, house wives and also aged people are now active on these social sites, communicating with the others, sharing articles, pictures and various other posts, and simply keeping contact with the other people. However, with the expansion of the usage of these sites, the issue related to privacy and confidentiality of private information arises. Professional issues with social networking The benefits The social networking sites are an excellent platform for the promotion of business ideas. These sites help the professionals to discuss and exchange ideas amongst themselves irrespective of their geographical locations. Besides the companies can do a great part of their marketing through the social networking sites. Since nowadays a large number of people are part of these online communities and forums, these serve as very good ways to reach the people directly. Online promotions and advertisements yield very good results and gives scopes for further innovations in this field for professional purposes. The employers in some organizations monitor the postings related to the workplace that the employees post in the online forums. The employers do this in order to discipline their staff and make them abstain from any immoral behavior. It is a practice in some companies that the articles or the photographs are checked with the senior management staffs before being posted online (Social networking: confidentiality and professional issues 2010). If after screening they are considered unfit for public sharing, then they are not put up on the social sites and other online forums. In this process it is ensured that the company’s image and reputation is maintained while it makes promotions to fuel its performance. The negativities The users should be cautious while putting any information in the social networking sites. Often, the employers make a detailed search about the candidate they are going to hire. Here a debate is existent about whether it is ethical to learn details about a prospective candidate by going through the profiles of the candidate in the social sites, such as the Face book or the MySpace. However, the users should be aware of the possibility of their profiles being vied by their prospective recruiters. The contents posted online reveal lots of information about the person which a purposefully crafted resume does not contain. Besides, the employees face problems in their job front for behaving injudiciously on the online communities. In an incident the hospital staff has been found to post obscene pictures in the social sites. The management of the organization in which they worked found the incident and suspended all the employees involved in the incident. Confidentiality issues with the social networking sites Every day several news appear in the media channels revealing the unscrupulous use of the internet. The social networking sites provide the people with the opportunity of sharing the updates of their daily activities with their friends and close ones. They can upload pictures, put status updates and can comment on the posts of the other connections. This apparently is harmless and is done with the sole intention of communicating with the known people. But these on the other hand lead to misuse of the social platform. Face book and privacy issues The face book grew in popularity initially due to the privacy it offered and the professional looking visual effect (Golden, 2010). The posts made on the Face book contain various kinds of information that are visible to the contacts. The people can tag their friends on the pictures uploaded to the albums in the account. Some of these contacts are directly known to the person. There are several contacts in the accounts which are half known to the user. Therefore the users run the risk of exposing some of their personal details to these people. It is not always guaranteed that the contacts that are not personally known to the user would not take advantage of the acquaintance made over the social site. Nowadays, we often get to know various incidences of theft of personal information and blackmailing that are related to the Face book. The Face book provides the user with the options to control the settings of the accounts. They can personalize the visibility settings, the people who can view their profile, people who can send messages or friend requests on the Face book. They can un-tag the pictures and also change the visibility settings to let the picture be viewed only by a select list of contacts. However, these controls are not fool proof. A discrepancy remains between the control level desired by the users and the level actually achieved (Trepte, 2011). Breaches of confidentiality and professionalism (Social networking: confidentiality and professional issues 2010) are being witnessed quite frequently are reportedly increasing. While the users make the posts with the faith that they could be accessed only by the close group of friends, it is not a very difficult task for the hackers to hack into the closed groups or view the postings through friends of friends. This platform is highly interconnected. The people face assaulting comments put on the photographs and even circulated without the permission of the user. This raises a serious question about the privacy of the users. MySpace The posts put on the MySpace are a public record of the user and it goes online. These small details count a lot when the employers and educational institutions get access to this information regarding the person’s activities in daily life outside the campus of the organization. These data reveal the true details of the individual’s take on life and thus shed light on what kind of employee he would be once hired by the organization. With the recent commotion created about the privacy settings of the Face book, MySpace has found a way to put a confident foot to revamp its existence in the arena of social networking. The Co president of MySpace, Mike Jones, has announced that a new and simple privacy setting is going to be launched very soon (Conneally, 2013). The users would be benefitted with these simpler settings compared to the complex methods of securing personal data in the Face book. Yet the issues regarding the security of the information is not totally demolished in this process. Conclusion With the rise of the popularity of the Face book and MySpace, the questions of security are being raised more seriously (Overbeck & BElmas, 2011). The act of putting all the personal information on the websites for entire the world to view it is not a safe thing to do. The youngsters are not yet aware of the risk involved in social networking. Posts made and comments put on the social networking sites should be done responsibly. By showing professionalism in the way communications are made, the individual can show himself or herself as a mature and serious person (Robbins, 2009). References 1. Conneally, T 2013, MySpace revamps privacy settings to counter Facebook's muddled set of options. Available at: < http://betanews.com/2010/05/17/myspace-revamps-privacy-settings-to-counter-facebook-s-muddled-set-of-options/>. [6 February 2013]. 2. Golden, M 2010, Social Media Strategies for Professionals and Their Firms: The Guide to Establishing Credibility and Accelerating Relationships. John Wiley & Sons. 3. Overbeck & BElmas, 2011, Major Principles of Media Law. Cengage Learning. 4. Robbins, SP 2009, Organisational behaviour in Southern Africa, 2nd edition. Pearson South Africa. 5. Social networking: confidentiality and professional issues 2010, British Journal of Midwifery, vol. 18, no. 8, pp. 533-534. 6. Trepte, S 2011, Privacy Online, Springer. Read More