Privacy in the Age of Digital Social Media

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The usage of digital technology is always increasing, and the people are aware of it, and are aware of various benefits that technology brings to them. They are always connected, able to contact almost anyone from anywhere, and they have access to the biggest source of information in their pockets. But, people seem to forget one thing - how much data technology creates. Facebook statuses, photo albums, videos, tweets - when reminded, most of people will remember these. But they are not the only data created. For example, Facebook stores information about all activities their users do. They store all messages, even deleted ones, they store all information about all logins, they know the times, places, and the devices you logged in from (Solon, 2012).
At the beginning of the age of Internet, companies wanted to track how many visitors they have. They developed a technique that involved including a beacon - special image or a piece of code - that would be tracked by the server. Each time someone activated the beacon, counter on the server would increment (Clifton, 2008). Although information about visits were tracked, almost no private information were stored. This changed when companies started getting interest in the actual visitors and not the number of page views. Different tracking techniques were developed to track the individual user’s behavior on the web site, mainly to measure variables related to sales, like conversion rates. That was the start of more advanced type of analytics.
In the middle of 2000s, a new trend started, the web started transforming from static documents linked together into an interactive publishing platform. Suddenly, visitors could leave comments on the web, create accounts on various services a...

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...013, 12 28). How much data did Facebook have on one man? 1,200 pages of data in 57 categories. Wired, Retrieved from http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/ archive/2012/12/start/privacy-versus-facebook Clifton, B. (2008). Web traffic sources & vendor comparison. Retrieved from http://www.advanced-web-metrics.com/docs/web-data-sources.pdf
O'Reilly, T. (2005, 09 30). What is web 2.0 - design patterns and business models for the next generation of software. Retrieved from http://oreilly.com/web2/ archive/what-is-web-20.html Facebook received 34 data requests from Irish government. (2013, 11 13). Retrieved from http://www.thejournal.ie/facebook-ireland-data-requests-1173142-Nov2013/
Santucci, G. (2013). Privacy in the digital economy: Requiem or renaissance? . Retrieved from http://www.privacysurgeon.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Privacy-in-the-Digital-Economy-final.pdf

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