We leaked our own personal information.

Globalization had brought the world closer together through technologies advancements, bringing people around the world closer together. "A lot of us are driven by technologies. Our computer systems will be as primitive as Apollo, how do we manage the technological change?” said Goldin in this TED talk (2009). With these technologies advancement applied to the global media and communications, social networking websites was created for purposes such as self-expression. Internet being such a powerful tool can aid our daily activities but at the same time, it could be a disaster for us if careless. These new inventions then created serious problems regarding privacy issues when personal information were exposed through social media but people were still too comfortable about it.

According to John Reed (2012), “Chinese spies created a fake Facebook account of Chief of U.S. European command and gain intelligence of many NATO Officials. “ This example is one of the most extreme cases that can happen when neglecting privacy issues on the social media. This report will be focusing on the angle of how personal information was given away by the users themselves because of negligence when expanding their social network.

“On the internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.” This was one of the oldest jokes about the internet by a New York Cartoonist in 1993. Internet today is different. People were strongly encouraged to use their real identity on social media. Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, the leading force of online social networking website once said that “having two identities for yourself is an example of lack of integrity.”

Social networking services allow users to easily expand their social network and keeping in touch with their network with just few clicks away. Most social media allow users to create their personal profiles and posting photos, location and updates of themselves.  However, those were the same factors that will expose their vulnerability. There is no segregation of friends, strangers and best friends once the information is uploaded for their online friends to view. Strangers are able to misuse the information for ill purposes (Lee, 2013, p.23).  Anyone can create any online profile they want even if the profile doesn’t belong to them. They can easily intrude other’s life and getting their information by creating a “fake account” that belongs to one of the target’s friend.

For this study, I’ve interviewed LTA(NS) Cheng Yew Toon, 23, former deputy security and intelligence officer of 48 Singapore Amour Regiment on his views specifically about “Accepting Friend Request”.

According to Cheng, he posted his private contact information on his Facebook account but it was private, therefore only friends of Cheng will be able to see. However, the followed up question to him was “Will you accept any friend’s requests?” Cheng replied, “As long as I interacted with this person before, most probably I will.” The problem identified was when someone accepted a friend request, without adjustment of privacy settings, their information will turned “public” to their friends, and people can start to extract information immediately before you finding out if that “friend” who added you was really your friend.

This phenomenon is not uncommon even today. Astoundingly, the larger part of the social media users are ready to give up part of their privacy in exchanged for being connected (Lee, 2013, p21). Cheng also offered an interesting angle of this issue. Cheng said that “The worst thing I can think of is someone using my information and creating a fake account of me.” In the internet era, the “need-to-know” maxim is no longer respected for personal privacy. There are websites such as Intelius are selling personal information online (Lee, 2013, p67). As discussed above, majority of the users were willing to give up some privacy for being connected. They might overlook the existing threat of people imposing them on social media sites which might lead to consequences that they can never imagine. 

Social networking sites should play their part too. Creating an easier user interface for privacy settings such as pre-sets for different scales of privacy will help users who are not tech-savvy to adequately protect themselves from external harm. However, this was not the case, "Keeping your Facebook info private is getting harder and harder all the time—mostly because Facebook keeps trying to make it public" (Gordon, 2013). Luckily, a website 'LifeHacker' had created a comprehensive guide in protecting privacy on Facebook. 

In conclusion, social media have pros and cons. As long as people are vigilant and sensitive about accepting friend requests, playing a part in protecting themselves, problems discussed can be mitigated. Users can continue to have their life posted for sharing or digitizing purposes but never to forget to have adequate privacy settings for information they don’t want to share. As Cheng had mentioned, problems can be mitigated if we can clarify with the person who added us as friends personally and taking more precaution in sharing sensitive information. As what the old saying says, “Prevention is better than cure”. Uploading and downloading of information are almost immediate, once published, you can’t retract it. 

Reference

Goldwin, I. (July, 2009). Navigating our global future. [Video] Retrieved from

http://www.ted.com/talks/ian_goldin_navigating_our_global_future?language=en

N. LEE. (2013). Facebook Nation, Consumer Privacy in the Age of Big Data (Chapter 2). Springer Science+Business Media New York

John Reed. (2012). Chinese Spies Use Facebook Pages to Gain Intel. Retrieved on 10 Feb 2014 from: http://defensetech.org/2012/03/12/chinese-spies-use-fake-facebook-pages-to-gain-intel/

Whitson Gordon. (2013) The Always Up-to-Date Guide to Managing  Your Facebook Privacy. Retrieved on 1 March 2014 from: http://lifehacker.com/5813990/the-always-up-to-date-guide-to-managing-your-facebook-privacy