It’s no surprise that President Obama lives his life under the public’s microscope. Last month, though, he offered advice on privacy. The president urged Virginia high schoolers to be mindful of the things they post on the Web, Bloomberg.com reported.
“I want everybody here to be careful about what you post on Facebook because in the YouTube age whatever you do, it will be pulled up again later, somewhere in your life,” Bloomberg quoted Obama. “That’s number one.”
Obama was speaking mainly to teens who aspire to work in politics — an arena in which poor, youthful choices could come back to bite you. But the issue of Internet privacy goes beyond that.
Facebook boasts more than 300 million active users, making it the No. 1 social-networking site in the U.S. However, Facebook’s popularity has not come without controversy.
Many employers use Facebook and other social utilities to screen jobseekers or gather information on current employees. In some cases, workers have been terminated for posts that employers say cast their companies in a bad light.
Facebook has sparked other privacy concerns, too. Although, the site offers privacy settings from loose to highly restrictive, Facebook’s default settings leave users more exposed than they may realize.
Many users join networks within the site to connect with others who live in their city, work at the same company or attend the same university. Unless users manually adjust their privacy settings, their full personal profiles are accessible to everyone in the network, which may not be the desire. For instance, students in the SCAD Facebook network may be willing to share their name, picture and graduation year. They may be more reluctant to share to share, say, personal thoughts or Saturday evening plans.
Another issue of privacy and safety surrounds the use of applications on Facebook. These applications allow users to play games, personalize their profiles or take quizzes.
The Northern California chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union recently set out to raise awareness of the applications’ dangers.
Despite the warning screen that pops up before a Facebook user accepts an application, “millions of people on Facebook who use third-party applications on the site … do not realize the extent to which developers of quizzes and other applications have access to personal information,” the ACLU chapter is quoted on the CNET News Web site. “Facebook’s default privacy settings allow nearly unfettered access to a user’s profile information, including religion, sexual orientation, political affiliation, photos, events, notes, wall posts, and groups.”
Kathleen Lynch, a second-year SCAD student, said she is one of the Facebook users who didn’t realize how much information she was giving up to use the applications.
“It makes you wonder why they would want to know that,” Lynch said.
Other Facebook users say they have found solutions to some of the privacy problems.
Fourth-year painting student Samantha Meeker said she uses the site’s “fan page” feature, which allows her to showcase her work and nothing else.
“I can link this fan page from my Web site and let people who are interested in my work add my profile without having them seeing my private information,” she added.
Although Facebook officials say they are continuously working to revise the site’s privacy settings, users are urged to still exercise caution and common sense when using it and other networking sites.
Illustration by Brittany Williams