Social Media and Privacy: When Rape Goes Viral

     It is amazing how quickly information can grow through social media. In only a matter of seconds a post can be viewed and shared by hundreds of thousands of people worldwide. The only problem with social media is once information has been shared it is usually public forever. After reading When Rape Goes Viral, we see both the positive and negative impacts of social media. I understand by publicizing the event it made people more aware and allowed for them to easily discover the predator, but at the cost of another persons life. The victim didn’t have control of who saw the tragic event or how quickly it spread. This can cause drastic changes in someone’s life and even lead to suicide as we read in the article. Information spread through social media is not worth a person’s life. The victims should be able to decide what remains private or public because they are the lives that are being impacting the most.

Online Privacy: "I Have Nothing To Hide"

Privacy on the Internet is very important, but it’s not as easy to achieve as one may think. We often believe our information is safe because a website is said to be “secure” or we have selected the “private” option on our social media account. Although we may feel our information is safe many will say that if it is on the Internet, it isn’t private.

            Whether or not people think they have nothing to hide on the Internet, everyone has information that should be kept secret. Information such as our address, phone numbers and credit cards are not something the common person wants to release to the public. The scary part is if a person with the right amount of knowledge want to find out this secret information, it is very much possible. We constantly enter this information online anytime we make a purchase or fill out an application/form. Many people are capable of hacking into websites where they can access an entire database of information from phone numbers to emails. Each computer we use also has a different IP address. This unique set of numbers is left at every website we visit and can roughly track down a user to their exact location. Although many websites we use such as Amazon are safe, the information is only as private as the websites security. There is always a chance of a possible breach in the system as we saw with Target. Our information may seem private, but it’s not impossible for others to make it public.

Target Advertising: The Internet Knows More Than You Think

Advertisements are everywhere on the Internet. Showing up on millions of websites such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter they are almost impossible to escape. When it comes to advertising the Internet knows more about an individual than one may think. The very second we visit a website every click that is made is gathered as information. The information is then used to target you, the individual, with the hopes of being drawn into purchasing a product relating to your previous searches. This is why we often see advertisements that we can relate with as they target our specific interests. Some may find this as an invasion of privacy while others may feel it benefits their internet experience as they discover products they were never looking for to begin with. As we move into the future advretisment technology will only advance as they analysis their audiences to discover what they are trying to reach.