Week 7: Online Privacy

This week’s reading dealt with the concepts of online privacy and the paradox in the reality behind online privacy. The author states that we often give out personal information more so than we should, and often find ourselves surprised when we found out that people whom we did not intend to read our online information such as parents or future employers often occur more often than we think. The author highlights the privacy paradox in that on one hand, people will reveal their personal thoughts online, while government agencies are collecting private information about us. The author concludes with the fact that government efforts to protect privacy have not gone far enough to protect potential online misuse of personal information.

In applying the theory from this week’s reading, I was assigned to find out more about a classmate based on the information on Facebook. Seungjae Lee is a 27 year old male from Cheonan, Korea. His birthday is October 8, 1982. He has eight friends on Facebook. He is currently going to UCLA, and is currently living in Los Angeles, California. Seungjae likes to read textbooks. He is looking to use Facebook as a way a means toward networking, dating, and friendship. He has no pictures up, and his latest status update is from a week ago asking “which company has the fastest line in the U.S?” We have two friends in common, Kevin McKenzie and Eric John Kim. Given that he has so few wall posts, he is new to Facebook. Other than his email that is pretty much all the information one can gasp from Seungjae Lee’s Facebook profile.