Crystal Rogers (FGCU) Privacy

            Email is a thing of the past. This day in age communication is done through websites like Myspace and Facebook. Most would say that these websites are a form of personal expression. Their users get to upload pictures of themselves, pick out their own design/layout, keep in touch with friends and even make some new ones. Most would also say that you can learn just about everything you need to know about a person just by viewing their “profile”. Now I don’t know about you, but I’m not sure I like the idea of the whole world knowing everything about me. Apparently I’m not alone in saying that because there have been many recent scandals about Myspace and the issue of privacy.

            In late October a News Reporter named Kevin Poulsen conducted an experiment that matched databases of registered sex offenders with Myspace profiles and found hundred of matches. These results sparked many controversies. Soon after this many victims began reporting stories about their run-ins with sex offenders due to the website Myspace. For example on June 19^th a young 14 year old girl and her mother filed a lawsuit with Myspace because apparently a 19 year old man, Pete Solis, lied about his age and contacted the young girl. He soon convinced the young girl to meet him in real life. He then took her to dinner and allegedly raped her.

            A few months after this occurred, Myspace announced that is hired an outside company, Sentinel Tech Holding Corp, to basically weed out the sex offenders and delete their accounts. This seemed to have worked because it was reported that they had removed around 7,000 profiles that could have belonged to registered sex offenders.

            In the end Myspace can only do so much to protect its’ users. Myspace weeds out offenders, allows certain options of privacy, etc. But ultimately it’s up to the users to decide how much information they want to give out. It’s not mandatory to state your address or phone numbers. You get to decide the amount of privacy you want to have. I also believe that it’s your responsibility to know the people you are talking to. If you meet someone online and know nothing about them, I do not suggest meeting them alone outside of Myspace. But then again people make bad decisions and will probably continue making them. We will probably always hear of new lawsuits every day until people wise up.

This entry was posted on 17. March 2009 at 20:54 and is filed under Introduction to Sociology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.