What Do You Think?

[admin]

Recently there has been a lot of controversy about social networking sites and people’s right to privacy.

Granted when one posts information PUBLICLY on the internet that content, be it written, pictures, video or whatever can be viewed by anyone anywhere on the planet with access to the internet, thus one should NOT expect any privacy with that information. And obviously one should not post anything publicly that could potentially be “embarrassing” now or when the same material is view in some little hidden corner of the net twenty years from now.

However information posted PRIVATLY on social networks or emails are increasingly becoming a very volatile area when it comes to online personal privacy concerns. For instance there was a city in the USA that got a great deal of media attention when it implemented a policy that required anyone applying to a city job to hand over logins and passwords for any social networking sites they used. Not just talking about Facebook and MySpace, either. The city wanted access to chat rooms and forums used by applicants. This would also potentially give the employer access to email accounts as well as potentially finical information. for instance with yahoo where many if not most all of yahoo’s services are linked together with one user id and password (chat, email, social networking, etc.)

The city did back off and changed the policy after enough people made a fuss and enough media attention about the invasive policy.

This brings us to a very sensitive subject there have always been bad employees which go out of their way to damage a company, both by their comments as well as making private company information public (for instance new product research and development). So obviously companies what to do everything they can to protect their interests.

At the same time there are companies that are doing illegal, dangerous, and hazardous things placing all of us in danger for the sake of an extra coin or two of profit. (for instance companies knowingly and intentionally putting a known hazardous synthetic filler into food products because it is less expensive than using safe natural item. Obviously those companies also want to protect their interests and prevent anyone from talking publicly about what they are illegally doing.

So now it is your turn . . .

What do you think a person’s personal responsibility is regarding what they say online (publicly or privately)?
And how far do you think a company should be allowed to go to protect the company’s interests?