Putting ourselves out for everyone to see is a scary thing. Or is it? Almost all of us are guilty of conforming to the social media world with sites such as Facebook and Twitter and social applications like SnapChat, Instagram, KiK Messenger, and Tinder. On sites such as Facebook, the user is able to adjust his or her privacy settings to their preferences, but how private are they really?
Recently, I decided to remove myself from the Facebook realm to avoid distraction during my last semester of college. I accessed my account and opted to deactivate it and answered Facebook’s questionnaire as to why I was choosing to leave its site. But rather than allowing me to deactivate my profile completely, Facebook only allowed me to choose when it would automatically reactivate it, the longest amount of time being only 28 days. There wasn’t a visible selection to delete the account until I searched within the account options.
The discussion of privacy has been coming up recently and circling around technology and how safe your personal information and documents really are. When nude images of celebrities were leaked, people took different stances on the matter. On a blog post on BBC.com titled “Are viewers the ‘abusers’ in celeb photo leak?” by Anthony Zurcher, readers offered different opinions regarding the issue of privacy. One reader commented, “If you are stupid enough to take pictures of yourself in compromising positions and then compound that by storing it on anything to do with the web, you get what you deserve.” Others argued about the lack of privacy. One reader commented, “On the one hand nudity or sex is not obscene or shameful. We all do it after all. So these celebrities should not be embarrassed. On the other hand, what they chose to make private should be kept private”.
What everyone, regardless of their status, should be mindful of is to be protective of your personal information, documents and photographs. The issue of hackers brings to light what you consider “shareable” on apps such as Snapchat or social media sites. Privacy seems to be evolving due to the nature of technology, and it is making it easier to allow possible employers, current employers and complete strangers to search you by name and see what you choose to post online.
