Personal and Private Information Exposures and Opportunities Term Paper

Personal and Private Information Exposures and Opportunities - Term Paper Example It will discuss these concerns from the perspective of protecting personal rights. The rights of companies to share information will also be discussed and the rights to have private information protected shall also be considered in this discussion. How credit agencies often skate the thin lines in privacy shall be another aspect of this paper. Case studies and measures supporting the position taken will also be presented. This paper is being carried out in order to provide a clear and well-supported discussion on rights of privacy in the current age of pervasive socialization activities. Private and personal information are now available through various access points in the internet – via social networking sites, online sales transactions, and even membership in organizations (Boyd and Heer). However, private and personal information expose individuals to various illegal internet activities including internet fraud, identity theft, harassment, phishing and similar activities. Through social networking sites alone, personal information is often available to the public and to the user’s friends (Chiaramonte and Martinez, 6). ... Networking sites, especially Facebook have come under fire for its failure to protect the privacy of its users (Coppola, et.al., 95). At one point, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg was severely criticized for stating that ‘privacy was dead.’ This belief epitomizes Zuckerberg lackadaisical concern for user privacy in Facebookl this would also explain why features to protect user’s privacy were not immediately laid out from the very start (Public Policy and Management). It took years and a significant amount of pressure and backlash from the social networking community for Facebook to finally relent to the installation of tighter privacy options for users. At one point, Facebook even admitted that it made the email addresses of their users available to various organizations and corporations (Lampe, et.al., 167). This practice has since been stopped by the popular social networking site. Despite the privacy settings now made available to Facebook and social network u sers, there still are risks to the exposure of the privacy of these users (Hass, 30). For one, there is still no guarantee that the social networking sites are not releasing user information to corporations for the right price. Moreover, the failure of users in utilizing the privacy features is also an issue which does not guarantee privacy and protection of users (Stutzman). Some users in Facebook are not aware that their social activities and other internet activities are often being tracked and posted in Facebook. Many websites now ask users or readers whether they are reading as Facebook users, and not knowing the implications of agreeing to Yes/No dialogue boxes, these users often just tick Yes and from then, all the articles they read, the videos they watch, and the