Online privacy is now becoming a major concern to Web surfers. With the proliferation of websites asking personal user’s information, no one in the online world can claim that his or her life is completely private. But what can online marketers do? Their goal is not really to intervene with their customers’ privacy. Their goal is only to get in touch with their customers personally.
When Burst Media conducted a survey regarding online privacy, it was no surprise that there is a concern about it in the majority. The young respondents have a concern with privacy but not as much as the older people do. After all, the older people have more social circles than the young ones.
This is where social networks such as Facebook comes in. When the social network started claim on all the information in its site, its users began to fret. Does the mere use of Facebook gives it the freedom to give out the information of their users? I think that is not the case. There is no other person who can give up their own privacy but themselves. Privacy, after all, is a right.
Luckily, Facebook decided to reassess its terms and guidelines. That is after the noise of protests it created with its users. But this alone is a sign that people are not so willing to give up their private information online.
But as Burst Media found out, the sharing of personal information on social networks is just one part of the issue. There are other ways on how a person’s privacy can be violated online. There is also the tracking studies which a lot of websites like to do. They do this primarily to study Web surfers’ behavior. However, what they don’t know is that they are intervening with the surfing experience of other people without them knowing. That, in itself, is unethical.
I would also like to add that status-updating websites can also violate privacy. Sites like Twitter is good because it lets a person share his life with the online world. However, it also tells people what they are doing, when they are doing it and how they are doing it. In other sites like BrightKite, the current location of a person is revealed. This is somewhat threatening to the person’s privacy.
I guess in the end it’s all about how you protect yourself. Stanton McCandlish in his blog post entitled “EFF’s Top 12 Ways to Protect Your Online Privacy” provides some ways on how you can protect yourself. We can’t really stop ourselves from using social networking sites or status updating websites like Twitter. At the same time, we can’t control the advertisers and researchers from taking our information. However, the information we disclose to the online world is still based on our choice.
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