Tuesday, February 17, 2015

Is privacy on social media websites actually private?

    I think it's fair to say the majority of college students have one or more social media accounts whether it be Facebook, Instagram, twitter, vine, etc. Although these accounts let thousands, even millions of other people, view their accounts some people can put their account as private which will send a request to the account holder to approve or deny access to view their account. When doing this most of us think our accounts are guarded and totally private but that is not the case. Although your account may be set to private any information you put on your Facebook profile is accessible to Facebook's associates, mainly advertisers and collaborating companies. Facebook shares the information you provide to their site to a plethora of companies then these companies track your digital footprints and make their ads based off of what you search and they provide this information to other companies (restaurants, brands you may like, activities). A new amazing yet eerie technology Facebook is developing is facial recognition. With this new technology any picture taken and uploaded to Facebook will be saved to a database so when a picture of you is uploaded from another user Facebook will tag you automatically. Although part of me thinks this is pretty cool at the same time it is pretty scary. "As PCWorld's Sarah Jacobsson Purewal explains, facial recognition is more than just creepy. Strangers would be able to access information detailing everything about you with a single photo".



   Another worry, especially for recent college graduates, is landing a good job. Today, more and more companies are reviewing applicants social media accounts before making their final decisions on hiring. "a recent CareerBuilder study found that two in five companies now use social-networking sites like LinkedIn, Facebook , MySpace and Twitter to screen potential candidates."(article)
It's crucial to keep your profiles private if you believe some of your posts could affect you in society but other then that it's just best to post something you think a potential employer would approve of, just to be safe.


It's important to know and always remind yourself before each post, upload, transmission, share etc, that everything we do online is permanent and can be tracked back to you in someway shape or form.We create a digital footprint while actively online, a digital foot print is a trail or trace of our activity online. To establish a positive digital footprint you want to begin by looking for guidance from people and professionals who have already established their own. Teachers, librarians, parents and other professionals who provide great examples are good to follow. You also want to be real and use your actual information not fake names. In doing this you will establish an identity that you own and it will be harder for people to steal yours. This also allows you to be real because people reading see your picture and your real name. Being consistent and using the same username on all platforms is another positive way to establish a digital footprint. This allows for you to be recognized by others in a positive way.



For class I also read chapter 1 of Untangling the Web by Steve Dembo and Adam Bellow. The first chapter was about curation tools. They explained how before the internet was really utilized it was difficult to share information like we do today. Bookmarking was unheard of until Joshua Schechter founded Del.ico.us a website used to bookmark information. The curation of this new tool started the information era. Shortly after Del.ico.us, Diigo another website used for bookmarking and sharing was made. Diigo allowed for the organization and sharing of different websites. Diigo made retrieving previously viewed information easy and quick. 

No comments:

Post a Comment