Privacy Concerns

The more information we place online, the more vulnerable we are to privacy intrusion. A lot of this information we disclose can be seen on social networking sites. As privacymaven.com put it, "the walls that separate parts of a person's life can be knocked down in the emerging world of online social networking."

A growing problem is identity fraud. This occurs when fraudsters take down personal details such as a person's name, date of birth and address from their social networking profiles and use them to take out a credit card in their name.




(Video by Riccardo Boleto http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHzMzdIESbg)

Another area of concern is protecting the privacy of children. The Times reported in April this year that two and a half million children aged between 8 and 17 have created profiles on social networking sites. This means that around four in ten personal pages are open for anyone to look at.

Robin Blake, head of media literacy at Ofcom told the BBC:

Parents who are allowing their children to go online without supervision or support...need to recognise that their children are potentially at risk.

Not only are they an easy target for online marketing but also for paedophiles. These online predators take advantage of the anonymity to lure children into a false sense of security. According to the UK police organisation, the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP), offenders will typically make contact in a chat area and then try to get a child into an e-mail or other one-on-one arena. Read more on this here.

To find out more about staying safe online visit the following sites:

• Bebo's Safety centre
• Myspace's safety tips
• Facebook's privacy and security advice

Method of snooping

It has become common knowledge that employers looking to hire people often come to a decision by looking on their Facebook profiles. All those drunken snaps of yourself you thought showed how much of a laugh you are could actually hinder your chances of bagging that dream job.

Furthermore, those already working for a company are also under surveillance as, according to the Irish Examiner, bosses check the profiles of people who have rang in sick to make sure there's nothing incriminating on there that would suggest otherwise.

More information on this can be found on the BBC's website.

Last month the BBC reported that a new privacy forum has been developed to address the concerns associated with online safety. The Forum's co-chairman Jules Polonetsky said, "we are at a vital crossroads for improving consumer control over online data." Read the full article by clicking here.

A survey carried out on ask500people.com confirms that people continue to be concerned by their privacy online.