Privacy

Privacy in regards to new media is an area of concern for many and continues to be something that is difficult to control. Prior to new media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, etc. it would be extremely difficult to find information out about your friends unless they explicitly shared it with you. Now, with an increase of connectivity amongst individuals we can see more information openly available to the public without any kind of permission or difficulty accessing. On things like our Facebook pages, we can see basic information about ourselves that if someone is looking to find more information about you, they can do that easily. Additionally, some social media platforms allow you to track your friends and have started making it easier to see what your friends are up to without them knowing that they’re being tracked. An example of this would be Snapchat with one of their new updates which essentially allows the app to use your location services to see who’s in the area. This is a huge potential area of concern because if the wrong person or anyone with bad intentions gets a hand of your location, then there could be a huge problem down the line. Additionally, the problem of cybersecurity has been something that has been extremely prevalent in the last few years and especially in the 2016 presidential election. The government and members of congress have been trying to get to the bottom of the hacking done by the Russians to the DNC and other organizations. This shows the increase in sophisticated and methodical criminal acts and can be used by other hackers to get into social media accounts. Personally, many of my friends have been hacked both through their Facebook and their email which means the hackers probably have too much information on you that can leave you open to things like fraud and identity theft.