The Loss of Privacy
With the advent of the social networking site, people spend more time online than ever before. Some people don’t even meet in person anymore, because it is more convenient to arrange a quick chat online. People load up their profiles with all sorts of personal information and pictures for the world to see. Privacy filters are virtually non-existent, and those that do exist are rendered useless by the public. Why only have “friends” view your profile when everyone who sends one message to you is instantly a “friend”? The truth is, these sites are terrible for people’s privacy, and people are just now waking up.
Germans and Germany in general are very cognizant about what goes up on the Internet, as they are often haunted by constant reminding of the Holocaust and the stigmas attached to it. Lately the German population has become suspect of the U.S. company FaceBook. They are convinced that FaceBook is completely disregarding their privacy rights and not securing all of their information.
The Germans have banded together to send MySpace, FaceBook, Xing, and other social networking sites complaints about their lack of protecting their information. They accused these companies of sharing their details, browsing histories, and even details off of their private pages with third party companies. The sites would share this information with online advertisers and other solicitation agencies for a cut of their profits. The people afre outraged at this, and feel that their privacy is being compromised. They also complain that the terms of service agreements that are mandatory to accept on most every site force them to give up many of their privacy rights and other protections they enjoy as citizens. They argue that the change in the status quo should only allow individuals to be able to control what is released, and that possibly they offer incentives for releasing some information.
The people say that if the companies don’t comply with their complaints that they will take them to court. Grassroots movements have begun to boycott the services, and try and put them out of business, or at least make a statement.
The Trans Atlantic Consumer Dialogue is what they organization has called themselves, and they demand that the people hold all jurisdiction of who knows their data. They are almost eighty organizations strong currently.
They also argue that if a user cancels their subscription or profile with the service, that they permanently delete all information on the user, and not keep any of it surreptitiously in a hidden data base.
Be wary when signing up for these social networking sites, who knows what rights you are giving up. Always read your terms of service before you blindly click accept too, as they know nobody actually reads these and will try and stick things in them small print. Be careful about what you put on your profile as well, because who knows who will be reading it and who might use some of your information for bad reasons.
If you wish to stay safe and anonymous online, try and avoid posting any personal information on these sites and be careful about what you are getting yourself into when you sign up. It may seem like a harmless communication site, but criminals know that is where clueless Internet goers flock.
