Me and my visibility

Admittedly, if you search me under the correct nickname, you’ll find a lot about me on the internet. I was smart enough to make several nicknames from the start (this was probably influenced by my parents decision that I could not have a Facebook account in secondary due to privacy fears… so I created an alter ego).

Being very young, I had written a book that I am very glad people do not know how to find (it has cringe factor written all over it)  I have the usual social media apps like Facebook , twitter  and Instagram  and also of course, WordPress but for my own other purposes beside writing this module.

I share most of my information  with my friends but I don’t really have my family in that connection apart from a few cousins on Facebook. I prefer to talk face to face with my family and close ones (also, it’s better to avoid embarrassment when you post silly pictures).

I control everything I do on social media and avoid posting anything that could affect my future as a journalist. I learnt that you are taken more seriously with a professional  platform on all levels. You cold however create a professional  persona online but think of how many passwords you would need to remember!

As a member of a university campus that focuses on the arts, I feel it is important to own at least two forms of social media because they can lead to connections with industry professionals (think Linked-In and twitter). The downsides to owning so much online is that anybody can find you easily and use information you don’t want them knowing. For example, you can now access your medical records online that displays your whole history from the start. People can also find out your family members just through searching your surname and viewing images of you with them.

As long as we protect our data online, nothing terrible should happen but its a case of us making the first move and deciding what we post in the first place.

You can say I’m kinda guarded

All my social profiles are private. Everyone has their reason for having a private account either it is from hiding your lives away from enemies/bullies, to just wanting your account and life to be private. Personally I love sharing my life and experience with my family and friends. On the other hand, when it comes to strangers that just try to contact me through my Messenger, I think it’s weird and I feel very uncomfortable and if they had access to my account then they see part of my life that I didn’t want them to see. I mean doesn’t most people dislike creepers? But also you do have people that are friends with you over social media and you have probably met them once or twice or were friends with them in middle school. But, even when they can see all my stuff I don’t like everyone to know what I am doing or where I go to school or intimate events in my life, even some distant family. I feel like the people that are really involved in your life should know what you’re up to and that’s it. I guess you can say I have my handful of friends and family but hey that’s just me. Snapchat for an example, I post almost everything on there but only my closet friends and family can see it because I don’t like sharing it with strangers. Because once you post your username to Instagram then a whole bunch of unnecessary people can see through another window of your life. This in turn, sways most people to conform into what is acceptable in the social media world. I think snap chat is there for you to engage and be yourself and not feel like you post anything wrong and then you’re going to get judged by how “friends” view your snaps. The user knows they are exposing this event in their life on social media and it is going to stay on the internet forever, so they make that decision of how much of themselves are exposed once they press POST.

Email: The Online Database of You

 

 

Think about your presence online and ask yourself what all your most used websites have in common? Whether it be social media (Facebook, Twitter) or online marketplaces (Ebay, Amazon), they all require an email address.

Want to sign in to Facebook? Enter your email address. Want to buy something from Amazon? Enter your email address.

Looking though your inbox you might see notifications from Facebook about photos you’re tagged in or places you’ve been, you might find emails confirming items bought on Ebay and you might even find an email from a relative. All of this data that makes up your online presence is collected through data-mining software by large corporations which trade our information between themselves and sometimes to our own governments.

Google’s Gmail  is the most well-known and most used email service online therefore making it one of the largest meta-databases in the world.

So next time you think you’re safe because your privacy settings on Facebook and Instagram are set to the highest level, remember that there’s always someone silently monitoring everything you do online.

Online presence and professionalism

To guarantee privacy, I ensure that all my social media profiles are kept private. You can’t even come across my Facebook profile if you search for me on the Facebook search itself. Protective, I know.

The reason I ensure this is twofold. Firstly, there are certain people, or old ‘frenemies’, I do not want viewing my profile, photographs, contact details and personal information. Secondly, I am concerned for the future and potential employment prospects. I only accept ‘friend’, ‘connection’ and ‘follower’ requests from people I know as to retain control over content. Even on Facebook, I must approve of posts and photographs before they appear on my profile.

However I do have two exceptions.

The first exception is on LinkedIn. I use LinkedIn to network with potential future employers, get recommendations and endorsements from colleagues and to ensure my current networks are maintained. My profile has a lot of professional information on it, however still does not include any contact details. Instead, professionals may make contact via ‘connecting’ and then sending an inbox message.

The second exception is that I allow my name to appear on published articles. Prior to university, I spent some time working as a ‘Digital and Direct Marketer’ for the tech start-up ‘Shoprocket’, which is located on Google Campus. Shoprocket is a SaaS e-commerce start-up that offers an enterprise scale solution, integrating seamlessly into any existing application, all with a single line of code. During this time, I blogged on their website and on guest blogs.

In the meantime, press approached us as to write about the product. For example, Superbcrew, an online technological news site, interviewed me for the content of an article. The published article includes my name and a photograph.

Therefore I am concerned for my privacy online and limit information found online about me. When I worked in the press team of a council, we used to get calls such as when an underage student from a school is of interest to a journalist in a negative story. We would have to ensure that the student makes their social media profiles private quickly as to help protect them.

Do you believe I am being overprotective? I am very particular about my online presence due to having my entire career ahead of me, since I am 21 years old. Do you think in 10 years, when hopefully I am in a stable job, I will still need to be as cautious? Why?

IF YOUR LOOKING FOR ME ADD MY SNAPCHAT

How visible am i online? Well lets just say if you  needed to find me just add me on snapchat (whitsxox). I feel like in today’s generation we put ourselves at risk due to the things we post online. Whilst doing the regular readings a few weeks back i came across a text by Papacharissi (2010), according to him he discusses that ‘our privacy is becoming a luxury commodity’ which simply means that we basically put our information out there in exchange to be social with others, so really isn’t privacy in our own hands?

 bet you thought id show the video lol

For instance once i made a YouTube video of me singing, i thought i was the next Beyonce so i posted it but after coming to my senses i realised i was actually more of a Rebecca Black. I managed to deleted the video but somehow my friends had fund a way to access the video and re-share it. So i guess the question is once you’ve posted something online do you still consider it to be yours or the Internets? Personally, i think its no longer under your control, whether your account is on private or not people will still somehow have access to your account. In another reading i did it also mentions that privacy is a dynamic process of optimisation, which is influenced by two psychological needs- ‘The need to preserve privacy but also the need to interact socially and therefore has to disclose personal information’. Again proving my point about privacy and what we post online is in your own hands.

Visibility Online

With the rise of social media, now being more apart of our lives than ever before it is pretty difficult to remain private all the time – use of personal photos, email addresses and of course your name. Even when your privacy settings are on its highest, someone, somewhere can see who you are and exactly what you are getting up too.

First of all to make a Twitter, Facebook or Instagram account you must cough up some of your personal information such as an email address, your name and date of birth, this is obvious because you are making an online persona. However you may set privacy settings high, which means not anyone will be able to check you out online BUT these social media platforms now have your personal information so are you really that private? The most used information social media platforms will use if the email you have given, either they will email you a notification like Twitter or simply try advertise or promote a new service they are offering.

In the modern world people even use others personal information such as photos and the name to come across as you – this is sometimes known as Cat-fishing and often used by those who are not happy with their own identity. In some cases this can have serious consequences on you and those who are committing what might be fraud.

Mostly the internet and social media is used safely and for only good reasons.

However what I find worrying some respects is how future employees may look through your old Facebook status or tweet which wasn’t particularly appropriate and judge your outside persona as being unprofessional in some manner. I personally believe that your personal life should not interfere with professional life but I do agree that this is a good way to completely make sure the candidate is right for the job. A wise alternative to offer an employer would be LinkedIn account, so your private life can stay private and you can concentrate on a professional persona.

I don’t know why googling myself is such an uncomfortable thing to do – almost like you get irrational premonitions of something unfortunate coming up in the results. Luckily, I made sure this wouldn’t actually happen to me long ago, because I was aware of the embarrassing and concerning outcomes disclosing too much about yourself could have, be it purposely or unintentionally.

It might be due to having lived in various countries, where my surname was always butchered somehow, but surprisingly there is nothing to find about my sports rankings and achievements at school – which in retrospect is a good thing, because that sort of information can still reveal your whereabouts. When my then-underage classmate’s (absurdly famous) grandfather died a few years ago, Spanish gossip magazines managed to draw up profiles of her and her siblings without them ever having said anything, just based on Google search results and their activities at school, as well as Facebook pictures, which scared them out of their minds and ended in a lost lawsuit since the information belonged to the domains it was on.

Luckily Facebook now gives you the option of making your account untraceable on search machines, as well as regulate people being able to find you through other information (like your phone number, which is now mandatory to use the messenger), which I’ve definitely made use of. My Instagram and other social profiles don’t have my full name on them – except for LinkedIn.

I guess we’ve all heard stories about people being denied jobs they were set for after getting their ‘background check’ done – because of “unprofessional” tagged pictures on Facebook or ever so slightly offensive tweets. Obviously I try for (the little) content I post to be unproblematic in the first place, but it’s always best to make sure and not mix private affairs and business to ensure our road to professionalism and security otherwise will go without bumps.

6 Seconds of fame

As a sociable person I have always tried to keep up to date with the newest social platforms, websites, and apps, I think at one point I also had a Bebo and a MySpace account.

The information available on me publicly online is mainly two accounts which are my Facebook, and LinkedIn which act like my first impressions for people, – where Facebook is my social first impression, and LinkedIn is my professional first impression-  all my accounts on other platforms such as Xbox, Instagram, Twitter have nicknames or usernames that aren’t really direct to my name,  since they are quite personal and not for the public to see anyway. Vine however is where it got out of hand.

So when Vine (six second video on a loop) came out, I decided to give it a shot and use the trending hashtags in order to gain followers and likes and share it with the world, what I failed to realize however is that there was a Facebook page which was saving the videos and posting them on it’s page, and that page ladies and gentlemen was ArabVines which has about 400,000 followers, yeah exactly.

The problem wasn’t that they have posted one or two vines of me on Facebook, but three ladies and gents, and this also goes further when I decided to search my Vine username on YouTube and found a few Vines on there too, so the information on me Abdullah AlSaad online is limited to friends and family, however my six second videos under a username (which I sadly won’t be sharing with you guys) are there for the world, and they are there to stay.

Look at Me! Online Visibilty

Having various social media accounts can be beneficial for networking with people and exposing our content to the world, especially on Facebook or LinkedIn. But how much exposure in the online world is a good thing?

I rarely use the two main social media sites- Facebook and Twitter- but when I do I know that the content I share can only be seen by the people I want to see it. I used to post on them all the time, but even when I was 13 I knew that the only people who could see my posts were the people I wanted to see them.

 

Most of the time, though, I will use Tumblr or SnapChat to communicate with people and share things online. I would say I felt more comfortable posting on either of these more than Facebook or Twitter because the privacy settings are a lot more comprehensive.

SnapChat is a good place to post pictures and videos because only the people you’re friends with can view them and only for a limited amount of time: your SnapChat story will only last 24 hours. Furthermore, the app lists the people who have viewed your pictures and screen shotted your pictures so you know exactly who is viewing your content. Like all other social media accounts, users can block and report people on who they feel uncomfortable sharing things with.

Social media can be a good thing. It can be great exposition for people’s content that they want the world- or just their friends and family- to see. But, I think, users should be more aware of their privacy settings because it would lead to a safer, more enjoyable experience while using social media sites.

Adios Creepy Followers

I have always been an active social media user since I was very young.

I use to use Facebook all the time until I came to a point where I had enough and started hating the changes – such as a rise in advertisements and fan – based content filling up my Newsfeed timeline. So I deleted it. But created a new one a few weeks ago because I had to join group chats which are part of my TV module, and if I didn’t I would have missed out on a lot of information. Personally, I didn’t really want to return back to it but I had no other choice.

Just this year I have started being extra careful with what I am posting, and I have deleted my old Instagram account which I had been using for almost 5 YEARS and created a ‘private one’ so I can select my followers, as in my old one I was getting weird ‘men’ following and messaging me, and I didn’t feel comfortable having photos of myself which were easily seen by random men. Now, I use a private Instagram knowing that my posts are only seen by people I want them to be seen by – making me feel more comfortable.

I have accounts on Twitter, Snapchat, WatsApp and YouTube. They are all private, which I prefer. Before my old Twitter account was public and I would get so many weird followers tweeting me virus websites; again just like Instagram I created a new private account.

The good part of being online is that you are able to block people and have a choice in your safety. Even though, I don’t believe it keeps you ‘super-safe’ at least it’s better than having a public profile with random creepy followers.

A Flashback

Growing up whilst social networks started to emerge and increasingly gained popularity, I personally never thought about consequences based on what I reveal until very late.

It all started off with a passion I developed for photography at the age of 14 and started individual blogs together with my best friend. We would regularly meet up to take pictures of each other, edit them so we could share it with everyone online. Later on, we launched  YouTube Channels, Tumblrs and Instagrams which were all linked together and promoted our blogs at the same time. Our following started to increase which of course was extremely exciting for us, on the other hand however some of our followers took it to the extreme. Fake profiles and fan pages started to emerge which we did not particularly appreciated and at such a young age, also felt quite intruding. Up to the present day all of our content is still available online, even though we stopped blogging and closed down various sites.

Of course the photography we shared online was an amazing way to express ourselves and our art. The images are also not explicit in any way, however growing up, we do wish we had more control of what is still out there. You do feel very powerless and the control over our work has been taken out of our hands. Therefore, I do believe educating younger generations to think twice before what they are going to post online is crucial.

Nevertheless, enjoy some pictures of my past and passion:

 

What is Private to us today?

When it comes to the internet what information should we display for everyone to see and how much? For me I tend to keep my information private and only allow friends to see information about me, for example on Facebook anyone can search for my account but limited information is shown like my school or college but not any personal information is shown. I chose to share certain information with my friends on Facebook mainly because I’m not that into using Facebook and updating it with all my information plus I personally don’t think of showing lots of information about yourself on the internet is a great idea. Any information which we choose to display on the internet is no longer under our control best example when uploading a picture to Facebook its not really yours any more, you can take it down but it will still be kept by Facebook.

As we are slowly increasing our technology we are putting up information about ourselves or about one another and that information is taken out of our hands and can be used by anyone, government or hacker. Even if we try to display barely no information about ourselves there will always be a way to get information about us from the internet.

My Online Presence!

To an extent I think that online visibility can be beneficial if used correctly. An example being platforms like Facebook and Twitter is a great way of sharing your own material that will get people’s attention. This can also benefit you in terms of employment as employers will get an idea of what kind of person you are.

The thought of someone typing my name into Google and having access to these sites that I have registered on seemed quite scary, but I realised that I didn’t have anything to hide and anything that I didn’t want people to see, I had the control to secure my privacy settings.

I am registered on the main social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat. I would say that it is mostly general information (what university I attend, and what course I’m doing) this type of information is shared only with people that I am friends with, and this information I would say is under my control. This is because I am aware the future employers can easily access what type of person you are online, therefore it’s important to keep in mind what form of identity you are portraying online.

Facebook and Instagram are the platforms I enjoy using. It seems like now people use Facebook to share world issues in forms of pictures and videos and it’s fascinating to see how quickly they spread. Overall I would say that my online presence is not too strong yet not too weak, which reflects me as a person. I would say having the right balance is important so that a clear distinction is made between who you are online versus who you are in reality.

 

Am I still in control?

 

My online privacy is quite important to me, but I don’t have too many concerns about it. Why? Well, I post on Facebook approximately once a month, and all of that content is visible to friends only. My account is private on Instagram. On YouTube, I’ve hidden everything away. LinkedIn? I never really figured out what should I really post there, honestly 🙂

Right, so I am not the one to be super-active on any social media platforms. I use Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, WordPress, LinkedIn, and Snapchat. That’s 6 platforms in total, which seems about average, but everything on my profiles there, except my name and my profile picture, is hidden away.

I consider the main reason for this to be my fear of certain people finding out too much of what they do not really need to know. For example, future employers: I am sure they do not need to see what my friends and I were up to last night.

However, what I cannot control is the content that appears in the media that is written about me. Back in school, I used to play badminton, and I have been to quite a few national championships. When I was about 16, I decided to google myself, and, shockingly, I found numerous articles from local newspapers, discussing my performance in the championship and my games with local sportsmen, during the past four years.

What was truly shocking was that the articles contained pictures of me, a minor at the time. They revealed my age and my city, and the badminton club that I belong to. How can all of this be legal? Luckily, it was small-scale. However, my parents still got the pictures taken down.

Yet that is the thing: no matter how much you hide away, a part of information will always be out there. Some of it you will not be able to control. Maybe it is time to accept it and just be more careful about what we post, and stop hiding from ‘strangers on the internet’? Is it time to accept the content that is created about us?

Let me know what you think!

Online visibility

In my opinion, online visibility is not a positive side of the Internet. Personally, only thinking of the fact that someone can just type my name into Google and find information about me is frightening.

What do you think I did? (What maybe many of us did). I “googled” my name. As a result, all my accounts came up, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube. Almost every social media platform I previously registered on.

Everyone can choose whether they respect their privacy or not. As for me, my accounts are private on every social media platform I use. On Facebook, the only picture one can see when visiting my profile is the cover picture, unless he or she is part of my friends list, and my Twitter and Instagram accounts are private so my activity is not visible to anyone unless they send me a follow request.

All these social networks we use everyday offer us the possibility to define privacy limits. It is one’s choice whether a stranger can see his online activity or not. Nowadays, people are more comfortable with sharing their pictures or any other information in any way (Zuckerberg, 2010). You would rather see 14 years old children posing for a new Facebook profile picture than playing interactive games.

So, I believe that being able to make our accounts private is a way to protect our privacy from strangers. But on the other way, don’t you find it a bit horrifying that someone can just find any information about you online?

Online visibility

As a journalism student, I feel it is particularly important to be visible online. The Internet is a great platform for sharing my work, and I aim to get as much coverage for my writing as possible.

In terms of social media, I am active on most of the big ones. I have a Facebook account, and it’s privacy settings are controlled by me. I have chosen to be visible mainly to my friends, although my name, and some basic information (like location) can be seen by everyone. Anything else can only be seen by my friends, who I have to accept on Facebook, to ensure I don’t share too much information.

On Twitter however, I am very different. I share most of my writing on this platform, as it is easy to link and tag to the rest of the world, through hashtags for example. Therefore, everything I post on my account can be seen by everyone, and nothing on there is secret. Because I use Twitter completely differently to Facebook, I have never registered much private information, and the only personal thing on there is my date of birth.

I am only active on one other form of social media, which is Instagram. Similarly to Twitter, I have very little, if any, personal information on Instagram. I am very careful with the kind of pictures I upload there, and anything I do put on there I am happy for the rest of the world to see, because my account is not locked.

Overall, I believe I have a strong online presence, but this does not necessarily mean I am oversharing information. For the career I want, I think it’s important to have a good balance between having a strong online presence, but staying as private as possible.

The Sense of “Safety” Within Online Communities

 

In an era of wide online communication options- ‘being part’ certainly means being online. The opportunities are constantly growing, and suddenly, our entire communication skills and mentality change- as individuals and as a society. Our engagement with the various online platforms influences massively on our public exposure and its battle with our privacy.

 

Personally, I am actively using Facebook, Instagram, WordPress, Twitter and LinkedIn. Those, allow a straight access to personal information and views. My use of Facebook and Instagram mainly exposes photos of personal life events, of myself and of my friends and family. Further, I am sharing regularly my interest in different events. Twitter and WordPress, are generally offering the viewers an access to my personal views and thoughts.

 

Following the sense of community, I often find myself sharing generously, without much consideration of the possible consequences of its appearance on the web. While I target and imagine that my audience is my online friends only-  I trust that as soon as the content is online- I don’t have much control of the audience who may potentially access it.

 

I believe that today our mentality is surrounding our will to be seen, to express, and ‘to be part’. As a result, we have developed, as a society and as individuals, habits of constant sharing. The danger is when the sense of “safety” within the community is blurring our crucial considerations of our exposure online.

Is our private life really private anymore

With social media taking over our lives, it’s even harder nowadays to keep our private lives private. With all aspects of lives covered by one form of social media. It’s even hard to be an individual and to have a private live with the rise of social media.

Having so much of your own personal life within social media can indeed be a bad thing. As many people are able to upload and use your information to create a copy of you or a fake account. Why do people do this, well no one really knows. I might be because of someone wanting to cause harm to the user or just because they want to. Admittedly there is no way in which you are able to overcome this. This is due to the nature of social media and the effect it has on people.

With the amount we share on our day to day lives is incredible. On average nearly half of the whole world’s population has at least one social media account. With Facebook being the biggest social media site with over 1.5 billion monthly users. So for many people, with the amount of contain being share, without every though getting share. Are our private lives private, well to a point no.? We share so much about it on-line we don’t have a private like we use to.

Links:

http://www.socialmediatoday.com/content/how-private-your-social-media

http://www.socialmediatoday.com/social-networks/kadie-regan/2015-08-10/10-amazing-social-media-growth-stats-2015

http://expandedramblings.com/index.php/by-the-numbers-17-amazing-facebook-stats/

Can you see me?

About 5/6 years ago I went through a phase of posting on social media a lot, however nowadays I only very rarely post on any social sites. Why is this? Its a mix of being too lazy and privacy. People’s oversharing on social media has gotten out of hand , so I have felt no need to share my personal life online. Also my last name Jones is one of the most common last names in the UK, even with my less popular first name I can be quite difficult to find online.

The most visible place I can be found on the internet is Facebook. I’ve had Facebook since 2009 and now my account is full of cringey photos and statuses, that honestly make no sense. In an attempt to shield the world from my hideous photos I have made a number of albums private. The ‘public’ can only see my profile picture, cover photo, where I am from and that I’m at the University at Westminster- so people who know me, would be able to recognise me from this basic information. But my friends can see more info, such as my birthday, schools, statuses and photos, as I have confirmed that I know them. It’s reasonably easily to control personal information on Facebook due to their clear privacy settings.

Similar to my Facebook situation, my You Tube channel is 7 years old and has many awful videos, which are all now private (apart from my videos from the last 4 years). This is easy to do as You Tube also has clear privacy settings.

My Twitter, Tumblr and Instagram have limited amounts of ‘personal’ information- mostly consisting of my name, pictures and things I have been doing, watching and enjoying. I allowed these accounts to be public because the information I share on these sites aren’t too personal, as the main feature of these sites to to connect with people you wouldn’t usually meet.

Life Under A Microscope

I must admit, I am pretty visible online. I actually really love social media, beyond its tendencies for users to be vapid and self-absorbed, because I think it provides a great platform to truly express who we are. I am active on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, Snapchat, LinkedIn, Soundcloud, WordPress, Squarespace, and probably a few more things. Typing all of that out, it seems like a crazy amount of online profiling, but each has its own unique community and purpose.

For example, I use Facebook for different reasons than Tumblr. Facebook is more about life updates and sharing photos with friends and family, where Tumblr is strictly an online community for me. I’m also more likely to be more open about what I post on tumblr, because family doesn’t follow me, whereas on Facebook, I self-censor what I post to make sure it’s appropriate. Same with LinkedIn; that is a professional networking website, therefore a completely different representation of myself. Twitter is a mix of everything because I am very open and personable on Twitter but I recognize that my profile is public, so future employers can read what I post. I try to make sure my online personality is visible with a semi-professional twist.

I just googled myself and the first several links were to the social networking sites above. But if someone really wanted to find out information about me, they could probably easily found out where I graduated high school, my GPA, published writing and other  information. I’m not really scared by that information because I have chosen to put so much of it online. I’m also going into a field that publishes writing, so that’s not a new concept for me. I also think it’s important to build a social profile so others can learn about you, and I don’t see that in a negative light.

Most of the information I found was put online by myself. I guess it would be different if I was more popular and other people were putting information up about me, that could get weird. I’m also going into a field that works with digital media, journalism and radio podcasting, so a lot of my work is based online, meaning I’m less scared this information. So far there’s nothing bad about me and hopefully I can keep it like that!

I guess I would be afraid if employers found my Tumblr page because I’m a super big idiot on that page and wouldn’t be representative of my professional life, oops!

The Big Brother is watching you. Online visibility and privacy in 2.0 Era.

The exponential growth of internet has not been merging smoothly with privacy issues and legal regulations related to behavior online. Just this week, we are all debating about privacy online, while observing the cyber war of Apple with FBI:

Privacy for Apple is nothing more than a marketable service

Stated yesterday the Financial Times.

Just a few months ago the phone company TalkTalk was hacked by a couple of under 18 years old, with bank details and sensitive data stolen to thousands people. In October 2014 there was the hacking scandal of personal nude pictures of well known celebrities, whose mobile phones revealed to be of easier access than they thought. A cheeky collection of  naked Jennifer Lawrence pictures winked to millions of strangers, and still does, in spite of the measurements taken to get rid of them.

Nowadays all of our most important details are online. We put pictures of our children online, floating in the meanders of something we have little knowledge of. The web giants like Google or Facebook are more vicious entities than the Big Brother of George Orwell. What’s the solution then? At the moment, none. Our lives are there, in the infinite tank of the web. The good news is that, apparently, technology and law are trying to figure out a way to preserve our most vulnerable identity.

And as long as we’re not Jennifer Lawrence our naked pictures should be safe, shouldn’t they?

Does online privacy even exist anymore?

A lesson I learnt from sharing personal information on social media is that once it’s on the internet, it always will be and there is no way to take it down. This is why we have to be careful of what we share and post for the public to see. I was shocked when I saw an application service on Facebook called “Bongo- What does Bongo Know about you.” (www.facebook.com/askbongo). It requires you to text a number from your mobile phone with your full name and location and it will give a response about your future. I thought it would be ridiculous, so I gave it a shot and was very shocked when I received a text back:

They not only know that I have blonde hair, they know I am studying television and also mentioned two of my friends names, though one was not spelled correctly; therefore I believe there is a person operating incoming texts and looks at Facebook profiles of costumers. This is an example of my private information not being so private on social media as everyone has access to it, not only my Facebook friends, but third party websites. I find this very disturbing; therefore I will give much more thought on what to share about myself online. Since a very young age, I have been involved with social media, sharing pictures of my life which are still probably around on the internet if I dig deeper. Have you ever googled your own name and found pictures and screen shots from your vine, twitter, Instagram or any other websites? If you can see it, everyone else can. It is essential that we look out for our online privacy and only share information that we would want our future employers to see as well. Since I am a media student and want to work in the industry, I have to put myself online so I have visibility for opportunities; however it is important we check the amount of information and the type of information we put on social media, even applications such as Snapchat. We might think our information is safe, however it travels through a system and it is always available somewhere in the world wide web and websites might gain access to it through other websites, such as finding screenshots on twicsy.com of my ‘Vine’ videos. However, if we have nothing to hide, we should not be worried, right?

Leave me alone

I started to use Instagram in 2014, 92 posts have been uploaded so far. It is not a huge number, even could be seen as a considerably low record in contrast to a lot of social media activists.

Since the occurrence of social media use, I am always trying to avoid getting too attached to it. But unfortunately, things didn’t end up the way that I expected. If you type my name on any search engine, you will probably find loads of picture covered from my childhood to my previously crazy night life, also the lover letter written by my first boyfriend on his blog. Obviously, it wasn’t me who actually made them available for anyone to see online, so who? Who took our control over our own privacy? Who makes us focus more on those virtual accounts than your friends next door?

Indeed, the convenience provided by social media is hard to ignore. Especially for people like me who live abroad, far away from their family and friends. Social media such as Facebook, Instagram is used universally as the platform to share our life and keep in contact with others. But there is one thing that I certainly don’t understand and never will do, that is what the accurate definition of “private” or “only friend can see” given by internet is? Because, I am really not that invisible as promised by the sharing terms and conditions.

I can live without posting my selfie. However, I don’t think it would be possible to live without internet process nowadays. But, could you just leave me alone?

There are just some things that no one should ever have to see …

I thought I had nothing to hide – until I found a tonne of embarrassing photos of me on Facebook from 5 years ago… then I seriously considered how private I am online and what are the impacts from the ‘digital age’ on online privacy and society.

Before engaging with this topic in depth for my presentation, I thought my online presence was quite minimal and that I was quite private online. All my settings were set to private – I thought. However, looking closer, I realised that my Facebook profile was actually public and I had people ‘following’ me without me realising. So what I was openly choosing to share with family and friends, I was also sharing with strangers, which could be dangerous if the information that I make available gets into the wrong hands.

It has been suggested that we are in fact living in the ‘post-privacy era‘ in which we sacrifice so much information about ourselves that no one seems to understand the concept of privacy. Or is it that we are willing to waver that right? For some reason, with advances in social media such as Snapchat, we actually want the whole world to know what we are doing all of the time. This has social consequences – especially for teenagers – as, if you weren’t tagged in the photo, you weren’t there, even as far as ‘if you aren’t online, you don’t exist’. There are worrying statistics suggesting that’20 and 80 per cent of adolescents report feeling lonely often’ (The Independent), and from personal experience I think that, although we are more connected than ever, we are isolating ourselves more than ever. And sharing everything that we do online often appears only to be to show off to other people, which then has more negative consequences.

“People present an idealised version of themselves online and we expect to have social lives like those portrayed in the media” (Sam Challis, an information manager at the mental health charity Mind- The Guardian)

So, although we make think that the information that we are sharing online is harmless, it is important that we consider both our safety and the wider affect that this could be having. If the aforementioned negative affects continue into the future, the problem may only worsen. If you would like to read more about this, see the links below.

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/features/the-loneliness-epidemic-more-connected-than-ever-but-feeling-more-alone-10143206.html

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/jul/20/loneliness-britains-silent-plague-hurts-young-people-most