Sharing Too Much Information
Why People Share Too Much Information Online
Lots of social networking sites encourage users to share lots of personal information. People often share more info with strangers through social networking sites than they would share with strangers on the street. This happens because of the following reasons:
- The internet provides a false sense of anonymity
- No physical interaction provides a sense of security
- People type in the information thinking that only their friends will see it, but they forget that other strangers have access to it as well
Why Sharing Information Online is a Problem
Sharing personal information online is a problem because anyone can access it. For example, on facebook most people put information on their profile or in their status' thinking that only their friends are seeing it. This is a problem because it is not just their friends. Most of the time people don't have their privacy setting set the way they think they do and strangers can actually see everything about you and what you post. Even if you privacy setting are set to just friends, there are still ways that people can get around that and access your profile such as hacking one of your friends accounts. Strangers seeing this information is a problem. It makes it very easy for strangers to be able to find you if they wanted to. Here is a few scenarios that could happen:
- If you post that you are going away on vacation, and your town is in your profile than it makes it very easy for a stranger to be able to find out where your house is and break in
- If you post what school you go to, it makes it easy for people to know where to find you during the day, and what town you live in
- If you post pictures online than it makes things a whole lot easier if a stranger was ever trying to find you
What to do to Keep Strangers From Seeing Your Personal Information
The best solution to keeping your personal information private, is to just not share it at all. Keep it totally off of the internet. If a website asks for you birthday or hometown etc, then just put in a fake one. If you must have you personal information online for whatever reason, then remember to make sure you have your privacy setting set correctly for every single part of the website. On Facebook, some people have their profile set as friends only, but forget to make their pictures friends only. Also, make sure you are positive that you have it set as friends only. Some people think they have everything set as friends only but then someone who is not friends with them yet, tells them that they can actually see everything. Remember that even though you have things set as friends only, that there are still ways for strangers to see your information if they really wanted to. The best thing to do if you don't want strangers seeing your information, is to just keep it off of the internet.
My Personal Opinion on Sharing Information Online
I personally think that people are sharing too much information online. In the picture above it shows that lots of people show their full birthday and when they're leaving their house etc. People are sharing their personal information online without knowing the dangers of it. I bet that if everyone knew who has access to their personal information and how many strangers have already looked at it, then they would take it off. I think that people just shouldn't share their information online. This would keep other people from seeing it for sure, because if its not there it can't be seen. Therefore, I think that people are sharing too much personal information online and that they should just keep all of their personal information offline.