Does Privacy Exist in Social Media?

Privacy in general has always been a contentious issue.  Privacy and social media causes even more issues, as it covers a range of topics which is complex and often difficult to police.

Social media sites actively encourage disclosure of information and in most cases people willing give up the information without any thought.  Birthdays, employment information, holiday snaps, work function photos and slowly a picture of your life is online.  All of this sharing may benefit individuals keeping up to date and support to create communities at a business level, but it also destroys privacy.

The more individuals engage with social media sites, the more likely they are to disclose information.  Once the information has been volunteered it stays there permanently.  In the process everyone opens themselves up to a number of things including identify theft, the hacking of personal information, bullying and so on.

Criminals trawl social media constantly, looking for vulnerabilities and gathering information.  Not forgetting of course the controversial issue of data storage and harvesting of personal information.  Every single bit of information you disclose is mined and sold off to companies so the information is valuable.

Whether privacy actually exists on social media sites can be a matter of opinion.  Some consider it a gross invasion of privacy.  Others don’t really have much interest either way, while others pragmatically believe it is a sign of the times.  There is, however, definitely a lack of transparency in terms of what information is collected, who has access to it and who buys this information.

In reality, there are a myriad of legal issues in terms of whether when you give up personal information should this information be considered private or how information is protected by social media sites.  It seems there may be a shifting in terms of what most people consider private information.

Do people still have the expectation that information posted on social media should be private?  When you are in your own home you have the right to privacy.  When you are in public your privacy actually diminishes significantly as you are in a ‘public space’.  Is social media a ‘public’ space or is it a ‘private’ one?

There is no doubt that social media is shifting the boundaries around privacy and perhaps challenging our mindset when it comes to privacy.  There is no doubt it is becoming increasingly difficult to have ‘private’ information on social media remain private.

Would love your thoughts on the privacy and social media debate…

Thanks for reading!

Feel free to ‘tweet’ or ‘repost’ this article or leave your comments….

Tags: Harvesting of social media information • Social Media Privacy • Social Network Sites • Transparency of information on social media