Privacy Issues in a Digital World

The internet impacts privacy, the New York Times says, "If a stranger came up to you on the street, would you give him your name, Social Security number and email address. Probably not. Yet people often dole out all kinds of personal information on the Internet that allows such identifying data to be deduced. Services like Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr are oceans of personal minutiae -- birthday greetings sent and received, school and work gossip, photos of family vacations, and movies watched."Italy's prosecution of Google was not fair, in that while Google may have made a profit off of the video being posted, it brought significant awareness to the issue at hand within the video and got people to see what was really going on. The line between protecting privacy and promoting free exchange of information can be drawn on whether or not the issue at hand has awareness brought to it. It people are seeing something happen for the first time, then it should be considered fair for them to post it without punishment. The same applies for censorship as it does for privacy and free exchange.Facebook and Twitter are examples of companies that are trying to get information from people. They want they information so that they can "help you to network" but in reality it helps them broadcast your information to other companies. You can stop them from getting your information by typing in incorrect information or changing your privacy settings on your accounts. Future employers can learn a lot about you from your facebook account by looking at your photos, your wall, your updates, and your friends.

Google gives you the choice of looking into Google Dashboard which slows information that is connected to Google accounts and lets you change your options and privacy settings.
I think that many of the people that are growing up today don't think that privacy is really an issue. The younger and younger children that get on the internet and using social networking sites, the more and more information they are giving out because they don't seem to know any different.

These privacy issues relate to the Long Tail and the internet as a democratizing tool because it opens the internet up to more people and more people become involved within it, but, it does hurt people to not realize the effects of privacy on the internet.

For more information, please visit The New York Times, articles one and two, Forbes and Business Week.