Online Privacy – A Reply!

I was going to put this as two parts but decided to keep it as one post so that it would flow.

After looking at certain contexts within the module scope, I thought I would go away and look at a fellow blogger’s post. I looked mainly at comments on my blogs and found that ‘Adrian’ made a post about ‘Online Privacy’.

He started off by linking us to an article on HEXUS by a Professor Nigel Smart. I found it an interesting read, and I found myself actually agreeing to about 85% of the article. I agreed with what he said regarding the matter of social networks (e.g. MySpace and FaceBook are the examples he gives). I wasn’t personally scared about this as with myself I am careful about what I put on my profiles and make sure that only my ‘added friends’ can view what I have put. One thing that caught my eye was when reading about the fact that potential employers could use the profiles to their advantage. In a sense there are many good and bad points, though for people like me who don’t know anyone in industry could be able to use this ‘power’ to their advantage and show off themselves (possibly even advertise themselves for future jobs that may interest them). This we did also discuss in one our tutorials and I remember the story that our tutor, Janet Finley. It was about a person who had put their CV on their blogs and they were contacted by a potential employer, the person ended up getting the job; proving that it can work.

Other places on the web which I believe use this context in a good sense, are dating services and web sites such as www.friendsreunited.co.uk . Here the members that sign up are providing information for all the right reasons, i.e. they want to meet someone with similar interests; or get in touch with people who have lost touch with them from childhood (schools and clubs).

What did scare me though was the section named ‘Irreversible damage’. Within this sub-section the sentence “Within minutes, chances are a search engine will crawl it …” (Kerrison, 2006). I as a member of social networks was unaware of search engines picking up this sort of information. I have never seen on any forum or web site state that this within their rules (or terms and conditions). The fact that I am unaware of this surely indicates that many other users; especially vulnerable users such as children are no doubt also unaware of this fact. The only piece of international law that I am aware of that would protect secure data (information stored about a member) would be the Data Protection Act (Crown, 1998). I only know this because when in the process of setting up our Virtual Airline, we had to oblige to certain legislation, by which members had to be above the age of 12 years old to join. We have considered lower age but refused the idea because of legal requirements stated internationally. You can find this here on my web site.

Onwards from the HEXUS article he also incorporated a YouTube video ‘Pedophile Alert … What are the DANGERS?’ (Renetto, 2006). This video intrigued me when I watched it. The title of the video seemed ambiguous and a little concerning, but it turned out to be based around the fact that members of YouTube had commented towards this guy releasing his private life on YouTube. My personal view on the matter is done through a comment on his post which can be viewed here (was unable to printout due to moderation and my timing of typing this post).

Crown (1998) Data Protection Act 1998 [Internet], Queen's Printer of Acts of Parliament. Available from: [Accessed 2nd January 2007].
Kerrison, S (2006) Social network users have ruined their privacy, forever [Internet], HEXUS. Available from: [Accessed 2nd January 2007].Renetto (2006) Pedophile Alert... What are the DANGERS? [Internet], YouTube. Available from: [Accessed 2nd January 2007].