Privacy

With the internet gaining such popularity, privacy has become a thing of the past. People have come to accept that strangers can view personal information about them on social networks such as facebook, and companies and the government are constantly viewing peoples’ activity online for a variety of reasons. The government has attempted to help the consumer regain their privacy online by passing the Consumer Internet Privacy Protection Act of 1997, although it is difficult to enforce and has become outdated with the fast-moving tendency of the constantly changing internet. Some companies including yahoo and google have come under scrutiny about violating privacy laws, and the government is now pushing do-not-track technology to be implemented on these websites, ensuring the companies cannot track peoples’ location (Lyons). With the explosion of the internet, social networks breach peoples’ privacy everyday and are rampant with online predators, the only solutions are to make privacy policies shorter and easier to understand and make privacy settings more readily available.

Social networks such as facebook have become increasingly popular in the last few years, allowing strangers to view anyone’s’ profile and systematically eliminating privacy from those who choose to join such sites. Upon joining, you are prompted to agree to an about 30-page long privacy policy, that most people don’t even read three words of. This is a serious problem, as most people don’t know the extent the social networking site can share and exploit your information, or how they can use it in other ways. Moreover, by default, the privacy settings are made so any stranger that searches your name can view most information about yourself, able to see about 90% of your information before even friending you.