Privacy & Confidentiality

There are many issues related to being able to protect privacy and confidentiality in social media. Facebook, myspace, YouTube have revised their privacy policies couple of times already. However, as a users we should be concerned about what we post or what kind of information we share with other web users. The more active we are on the social networking sites, the higher the risk of losing the confidentially. We might think that only our friends can see what we post but in reality everyone can access it and maybe use it against us in the future. Some for profit agencies search the social web sites to target market young people. They try to find out what you like, what kind of music you listen to, what style of clothes you wear and based on that they send you advertisements, promotions, marketing offers, etc.On internet it is really hard to be confidential. Recently, MIT students performed a research study on facebook users. After that reasearch they were able to come up with a way to find out the sexual orientation of facebook users based on what kind of friends they have, what kind of posts they make, what pictures they post, etc. Simply, internet is a huge data mine. It is really almost impossible to be active in social networking websites and at the same time being able to fully control and protect our privacy. Each and every action we take on internet is traceable and recorded if we want it or not.