What is ‘private’ any longer?

Spy_eyeThe word is getting out there, not as quickly as we would want, that people need to be careful about just how much information they provide about themselves, and to whom, via social networking sites. In all the excitement of discovering the utility of a social network site, people can unwittingly compromise themselves. This is an issue for everyone, however, a lot of the focus, quite rightly, has been on kids and youngsters to keep them out of the prying eyes of on-line predators.

Zoe Kleinman has brought an interesting perspective to all of this with an article she has written on the BBC News site. In her piece she referes to research to be presented by Dr Kieron O’Hara of  Southampton University, wherein,  he calls for people to be more aware of the impact on society of what they publish online.  Privacy law is driven by a concept of a reasonable expectation of privacy. As more of our private lives have moved online, either intentionally or not, then the expectation of privacy has changed. What is normal now? The bottom line is that, with more people putting ever more private information out there, then we not have the level of legal recourse that we think we have. However, we are part of the community and our actions do ultimately drive the social norm. Hence, the solution is down to us and what we ourselves do on-line.

January 8, 2010 | Filed Under Announcements, Identity theft, Security 

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