Facebook, Twitter, Myspace-am I sharing too much information?

You are actually sharing no more information about yourself than can already be found on large information systems and database that are in existence due to new technology. If you have ever brought a house or rented an apartment there is an online database that journalists and real estate agents can access. It will tell them your name, age, gender, how much you paid for the house, how much the value has risen or fallen, what occupation you had when you bought it, how big the land size is, it also has an all angles images section and the house plans. As a small example this is pretty scary. Another example is recruitment websites. For example, I applied for a job in one government department, yet in the last month I have received offers from four different departments via email. They have already filled in the majority of my application which asks questions such as address, academic record and alternative contact person. It is your personal opinion being on record, rather than your details which causes problems on such sites.
In essence this is the privacy debate (O’Shaunessy & Stadler, 2006, p.67). During April the EU called for tougher privacy rules on the Internet. An article in the Sydney Morning Herald said, “the commission was carefully watching how sites target users with ads in order to ensure they respect European rules, which she said were crystal clear: a person's information can only be used with their prior consent’” (2009). So next time a survey pops up on Facebook and you click allow before you do it take notice of how your advertisements change on your home page, becoming more and more relevant to you.





O’Shaughnessy, M. & Stadler, J. 2006, ‘Media and Society’ (3rd Edition), Hong Kong, Oxford University Press

The Sydney Morning Herald, April 12 2009, ‘EU urges tougher Internet privacy,’ Fairfax media.