Facebook not only sells personal information to private organizations, but also owns the rights to any images posted within its site. Why are digital natives continue to willingly give out personal information to a website that sells that information? The notion of privacy when it comes to being a protected right in a democracy is of very little concern when it comes to students.
One can find almost everything there is to know about themselves online. After a quick search of my name, I came up with my Facebook, a forum I used to post in, and one of my older blogs. The last two items I have not used in several years, and yet they appear near the top of my search.
Facebook has been selling personal information about its users to marketing firms, that create ads that are of interest to you. After searching for a company of Facebook, I then found myself staring at an ad for that company. Facebook has sold my search results, much like Google, to a marketing firm to process my information.
It's a scary thought that all my information that has been posted, not only on my wall, but others have found its way back to me. Based on things that I have become a fan of, ads now pop up based on key search words. Even as I type this an ad has come up pushing me to move to Philadelphia. This is most likely due to become a fan of the TV show: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.
Is the ability to sell our private information all in the details? Did we all agree to the website being allowed to sell our information? Maybe somewhere when I first signed up it said so, but I certainly did not agree to allow Google to do the same after using its search engine. Perhaps selling our information is something that these companies expect us just to give up, because they see it as benefiting us.
I'm going to end this blog with a quote from an episode of Saturday Night Live, where Bill Hader is depicting Julian Assange. His representation of Assange is not only entertaining, but also gets at the root of the issue of personal/private information.
“What are the differences between Mark Zuckerberg and me? I give private information on corporations to you for free, and I’m a villain. Zuckerberg gives your private information to corporations for money and he’s Man of the Year.”
— Julian Assange (Bill Hader) on SNL
I do agree with you. I think the privacy is a major concern of using internet. Sometimes, we have to leave our informtion in order to create a account. What can we do to protect our privacy?
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