Eng204: Privacy and Social Networks
Social networks and privacy: The era of publicness
Abd Al Karim Saleh Iqelan
American University of Sharjah
Dr. Khawla Ahmed
Summer 2012
Social Networks and Privacy: The Era of Publicness
“Privacy seems to encompass everything, and therefore it appears to be nothing in itself” (Solove, 2008, p. 7). It is an oversimplification to define privacy as all what an individual owns. With the evolution of new technologies nowadays, it is very hard to define privacy because it varies from one person to another and from one culture to another (Solove, 2008). With the rise of social networks during the last decade, new views about privacy started to emerge due to its special mechanism in sharing information. Social networks enable users to instantly share information, thoughts, photos, products and videos with the many users in the network at once. Unlike other means of communication, the information in social networks can spread to hundreds of users in seconds. Then, the users who received the information may share it among their network, and then further to other networks, which will end up in spreading the information to millions of people in no time, just like a chain reaction. This new mechanism of sharing, which is becoming faster every day, raised new concerns about privacy among individuals and organizations. In spite of all these concerns about the personal privacy on the social networks, social networks websites are the most visited websites in the internet. For example, Facebook has reached 901 million monthly active users in April, 2012 (Hachman, 2012). Although social networks enables an easy sharing of private information about individuals or low profile information about organizations, individuals and organization should not be afraid of using social networks due to privacy concerns, and instead they should be more public and utilize the social network. Being public and open to the world is better than being private and closed because it enables
Abd Al Karim Saleh Iqelan
American University of Sharjah
Dr. Khawla Ahmed
Summer 2012
Social Networks and Privacy: The Era of Publicness
“Privacy seems to encompass everything, and therefore it appears to be nothing in itself” (Solove, 2008, p. 7). It is an oversimplification to define privacy as all what an individual owns. With the evolution of new technologies nowadays, it is very hard to define privacy because it varies from one person to another and from one culture to another (Solove, 2008). With the rise of social networks during the last decade, new views about privacy started to emerge due to its special mechanism in sharing information. Social networks enable users to instantly share information, thoughts, photos, products and videos with the many users in the network at once. Unlike other means of communication, the information in social networks can spread to hundreds of users in seconds. Then, the users who received the information may share it among their network, and then further to other networks, which will end up in spreading the information to millions of people in no time, just like a chain reaction. This new mechanism of sharing, which is becoming faster every day, raised new concerns about privacy among individuals and organizations. In spite of all these concerns about the personal privacy on the social networks, social networks websites are the most visited websites in the internet. For example, Facebook has reached 901 million monthly active users in April, 2012 (Hachman, 2012). Although social networks enables an easy sharing of private information about individuals or low profile information about organizations, individuals and organization should not be afraid of using social networks due to privacy concerns, and instead they should be more public and utilize the social network. Being public and open to the world is better than being private and closed because it enables
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