Privacy & Confidentiality

As new media grow, the risk and dangers of privacy loss and confidentiality grow as well. In this case, I will use Facebook as a example of new media which involves the risk and dangers of privacy loss and confidentiality since there are a lot of information users have disclosed on this profile pages. This also linked to my term paper since there's a section of my paper that deal with Facebook and privacy which I will directly copy and paste from my paper.

Facebook indicated in their privacy policy that “Facebook can indeed share your information with other companies for advertising or other purposes.” (Jones 21). However Facebook only have access to information that Facebook’s users have disclosed. According to Information Revelation and Privacy in Online Social Network by Ralph Gross and Alessandro Acquisti:

In general, CMU users of Facebook provide an astonishing amount of information: 90.8% of profiles contain an image, 87.8% of users reveal their birth date, 39.9% list a phone number (including 28.8% of profiles that contain a cellphone number), and 50.8% list their current residence. The majority of users also disclose their dating preferences (male or female), current relationship status (single, married, or in a relationships), political views (from “very liberal” to “very conservative”), and various interests (including music, books, and movies). A large percentage of users (62.9%) that list a relationship status other than single even identify their partner by name and/or link to their Facebook profile. (Gross 75)

Facebook’s users have disclosed an shocking amount of personal information that are at risk from a security breach, hacker break-in and/or even daily Facebook’s users who have stumbled onto your Facebook profile page. At that instance, that individual who have stumbled onto your Facebook profile page would have all the basic information he/she need to build up their background database on you. The individual would know who you are, where you live, when you’re born, how to contact you, who you’re in a relationship in, what are your interests and more. The information Facebook’s users disclosed on their profile page can be at risk for potential stalkers in determining and locating where their victims are located.

Even strangers that you never met before can access your profile page and know where you're located, born, etc. according to the information you disclosed. So in my opinion, as new media grow, so does the lack of privacy and confidentiality.