41365252 Cindy Chan

Reflection: Privacy and copyright issues

Introduction:

When the internet concept was first presented in the past, no one can predict how it will be developed in the future and nobody released that it will become a part of human's life. However, in nowadays, it already becomes an absolute thing for us to share and gain information through it. Social networking is very popular now. It allows us to meet people through the net by some social web sites such as facebook, blogger, flickr and last.fm. Not only for meeting friends but also let us to share our creations such as music and graphics. People puts their personal information onto the web, upload daily photos or own creations to share them with others. However, problems increased since this kind of social networking web sites become popular. Privacy problems, scandal, copyrights are the main common problems come along with these social networking. For my own reflection, I would like to share how bad can these networking caused and how we can try our best to avoid this kind of problem.

Focus:

In this reflection, I will focus on several social networking websites, which included facebook, last.fm and flickr.

Background:

Facebook:

Facebook is a very common social networking website. It was first inspried from the "Facemash" of Harvard University. Facebook is a very successful social website as it is a free access website. At first, it was a social network for university students in America. However, it expanded its area and there are already more than a hundred and seventy-five millions members around the world according to the report of Lawyer Ahead.ca. The function that facebook includes are very useful, interesting and the most important thing is it is very easy to use. It allows users to fill in personal details, upload photos, sent digital gifts, personal or open messages, sharing games, etc. Besides, you also can see which friends of yours are online on facebook. Then you can sent message to them straight ahead just like MSN.

Last.fm:

This is a social website which let musicians to upload their own creations and share with friends or unknown people. Also allow users to upload personal video to share. Moreover, we can listen to the existing songs, which are sung by artists, before we purchase their CD album.

Flickr:

Flickr is a website belongs to Yahoo, which let us to share personal photos and graphics creations. People can leave comment of every single picture. It also contains blog for users to type their own diary.

Reflection:

In the social networking world, it is very easy to let unknown people to step into your personal life. Therefore. we have to be careful for our account's security. Maybe there are lots of users think that uploading private photos or details is not a big deal, but it may lead others or us to a serious consequence. In the original rules, facebook and other social networking websites were able to sell clients' details to third parties, which means our personal details might be situate in an insecurity area. Moreover, fake information might harm us in a different way. There is a real case in London that a man called Grant Raphael, created a facebook account under his school-friend, Mathew Firsht, personal details. Grant was found guilty by the High Court in London. Imagine if there is someone fake your details and create a facebook account and starting meeting strangers around the world, it might get you into some troubles one day. It is one of the main problems of privacy security when creating account in social networking website. Neither facebook nor flickr does not contain any method to confirm your real identity. All you have to provide is name and email address, it cannot protect you from someone stealing your identity. Facebook user may find it is very easy to delete the photos you do not want in your page by clicking "delete this photo". After I have done the research of privacy on facebook, I found a very interesting information about facebook. According to the research I found, it said that even user deletes their files or page in facebook, the information will not be erased immediately and still stored in the company's servers. This situation changed until February 2008. I have been using facebook for more than 2 years already. I am quite sure that before February 2008 I had erased certain amount of personal data which I did not know that after I delete them, hackers or people can still get them from facebook company. it will be great if the company stated this problem on their site to let user knows about it before they changed their policy. I believe that facebook still has leak of privacy problems need to correct. It will be great if they can state the problems they are facing to the public. 

There are a few ways to find friends through facebook. Firstly, you can simply type someone's email address to find him/her. Secondly, you can find friends through the tool called "Find people you know on Facebook" as it will show all the people who has common friends with you. Lastly, you can search unknown people by clicking into different people's account or groups. As it is that easy to let people look through your personal page, user can manage their own security level in the settings, which I personally think it is a wonderful design. User can let people read your page after you confirm he/she as your friend. If you find someone harassing you in facebook, you can always block the user so that person would never be able to find your page forever, until you give him/her permission. For the private photo upload, user can choose to let everyone read it or just share them with a few groups of users.

Other then facebook, flickr is the other kind of social networking site to let user share personal pictures with others. Personally, I joined flickr was all because of my course graphic design. We create our own group and started posting our creations to let other students and tutorials to give us certain appropriate comments. It works very well and it is very easy to use as well. However, I wonder what if someone create a fake identification and join our group. He/she might steal our work and make slightly change and sell it to third parties. There is no way to avoid this kind of problems, even there is no policy or law to protect original creation post on social website. Once again. flickr does not contain any method to control fake details account. I believed last.fm is facing the same problems as well. Musicians share their own creation and no one can protect their work. Perhaps all they want are just sharing their own product and willing to get feedback from different people. However, they put themselves in a risk. 

Conclusion:

To sum up, privacy and copyright problems cannot be a hundred percent solved in this social networking world, no matter how hard did the programmers of the websites tired. Also, users should be responsible to their own personal details, which they wrote on their page. All we can do is to learn the security management of each site and choose an appropriate one for ourselves. 

References:

1. Tabak, Alan J.2004 "Hundred Register for New Facebook Website", The Harvar Crimson Inc

2. Lawyerahead.ca. 2009, "Facebook Imposter: Privacy and Copy Right Issues"

3. Cheung, Jacqui. 2009. " RIAA deniesrumors that Last.fm turned over user data", ARS