Information over sharing on Social Networks

People don’t mind sharing even personal information over the internet, particularly on the Social Networking sites these days in sharp contrast to previous times where Email ids were created using fake names. The initial urge to protect privacy in terms of communicating personal details has gone down in the past few years leading to the emergence of an “Age of Oversharing”.

Impact

The need to share information with others is understood but today’s tech savvy generation, under the pretext of staying connected, makes available a lot of vital information online that can be accessed by anti-social elements. Though it is good to maintain constant contact with those who matter and keep them updated about your whereabouts but it is also necessary to ensure that it is not being used for some harmful purpose. This has become major concern with Privacy Experts these days.

Location based Social Networking and issues

Social Networks like Twitter, Facebook, Orkut, etc are the convenient platforms where the users can share a great deal of personal information, even that of their location. There are Location based social networking sites that allow users to disclose their exact geographical location.

Adverse Implications of Oversharing

The disclosure about the daily routine, place of stay and activities that one does is an open invitation to criminals, burglars to stalk you. It provides them an easy opportunity to keep a track of your life and plan some criminal action. To say for example, if a person has updated his/her online profile saying, “Out on a holiday”, then a criminal can make use of this information to execute the robbery plans. Similarly there are several other things that one becomes prone to by excess revelation of information.

Photos too can be tacked

Forget about the Location specific social networking, the photos clicked using the smart phones and uploaded on the sites can be used to gain information about your location.

Inference

Experts opine that people in their efforts to socialize often cross the boundary line between what to share and what not to share without realizing. They share information to follow the trend and in the process forget that privacy needs to be maintained to ensure safety.

It is therefore advisable to make use of Privacy settings to regulate access to your personal information.