Privacy issues of Social Networking Sites

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By virtue of the expanding popularity of the social networking sites, such as FacebookTM, TwitterTM and MySpaceTM, Internet users contentedly disseminate their personal information whilst overlooking the threat of privacy disclosure. According to statistics presented by FacebookTM (2013), there are about 699 million daily active users as of June 2013, indicating about one tenth of the world population are using FacebookTM actively. Nevertheless, it is widely recognised that this expeditious growth of popularity of social networking would contribute to various privacy issues. Therefore in this essay, privacy issues of communicating and disclosing personal information through the social networking sites would be deliberated and feasible preventive measures which could be undertaken to strengthen online security and the privacy of the clients of social networking sites would be introduced.
Boyd and Ellison (2007) defined social network sites as:
“Web-based services that allow individuals to construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system.” (p. 211)
In other words, on social networking sites, people are proficient of initiating a relationship, often between strangers, through social networking sites, as well as communicating with each other and acquiring other’s personal information effortlessly. This denotes that offenders could assemble valuable pieces of intelligence related to their victims, and approach their target for benefits.
Owing to this phenomenon, there are several privacy concerns raised as a consequence of personal intelligence leakage which fin...

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...nal level: what is Cyberstalking? Retrieved from http://www.cvcerie.org/additional-resources/cyberstalking/
Hayes, N. (2013 August 1), Five Common Legal & Regulatory Challenges with Social Media, Forrester Research. Retrieved from http://blogs.csoonline.com/social-networking-security/2726/five-common-legal-regulatory-challenges-social-media
Hobson, D. (2008). Social networking – not always friendly, Computer Fraud & Security, Computer Fraud & Security, 2008(2), 20.
Identity Theft Resource Centre (n.d.). Identity Theft Resource Centre, Non-Profit Organization. Retrieved from http://www.idtheftcenter.org/id-theft/id-theft-resource-center.html
Marie, N.L., (2009, September 25). Email hackers steal law student’s identity in “e-whoring” Facebook scam. Metro. Retrieved from http://metro.co.uk/2013/09/25/email-hackers-steal-law-students-identity-in-e-whoring-scam-4111921/

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