Privacy and Confidentiality

With the rise in popularity of social networking technology (a facet of new media), people are sharing more and more information about themselves through the Internet. Even though users of popular websites such as Facebook and Twitter have the option to toggle privacy settings to restrict who views their profile and posts, the privacy settings put in place on those sites are neither clear or easy to understand ("legalese"). Because of the rise of cyber-crime and piracy, even dealing with other less obvious new media technologies such as P2P filesharing can be subject to scrutiny by the government, making confidentiality seem like a thing of the past.Taking this into consideration, the best way for the average person to avoid giving up information that they would not like publicly shared is to  a) not engage in controversial or sketchy  and b) avoid mentioning it on social media.

From the other perspective, private and confidential information recovered by third parties or large corporations often get used for a variety of non-beneficial tasks. By using third party companies with tracking software, corporations often use users' browsing history and entries made on new media platforms to tailor advertisements on the websites that they view. Other than corporations and interested third parties, nefarious individuals use information listed on new media technologies for nefarious purposes. With access to a person's name and other information publically or stored on a social networking site's server, a hacker can use the data to wreak havoc to a person. Possible threats range from defamation, cyberstalking and even identity theft.

As sad as it seems, privacy and confidentiality are routinely breached by staying connected and  participating in social media. In order for us to stay in touch with our friends, colleagues, and even businesses, we must willingly release information to people who we might not know are even involved.