Reader's Response Draft 1

According to the article “The Perils of Over-sharing in Social Networks” by David Emm (2014), Internet security has effects on many aspects in our lives. Many people feel uncomfortable about being monitored by authorities. Since the Internet has become an integral part of our lives, this made us susceptible to threats due to high accessibility of personal data. Posting on social media has more negative effects than just showing to counterparts, where sometimes can be used for evidence of unfavorable outcomes. Also in a corporate context, over-sharing can lead to leakage of business information thus pose a threat to organizations’ survival and profitability. However, there are several steps that everyone can take to reduce vulnerability to threats.

In our daily lives, many depending on the Internet heavily on personal or business purposes. Many fancy functions such as check-in, tagging, and liking that supposedly be social sharing functions have been exploited by people with distorting purposes. For example, revealing your current location in a fancy night club with a group of friend by tagging photos or checking-in locations, making yourself known that you are currently not at home. Some who get to know your home location would pay a secret visit, resulting in burglaries and even robberies in real life cases. I have been warned not to post any photos such as boarding passes and passport at the airport, because that would make everyone who follows me know that I am going overseas and someone can do unfavorable things. Personal safety issue is the main concern for over sharing.

Many of us nowadays, including me, resort to social media to gain recognition in what we do, such as academic, activities and work. I agree with the author that posting such contents online will sometimes jeopardize one’s credibility, work confidentiality and sometimes even reliability. One should not reveal his or her own life to the extent that it can become evidences that will turn against themselves. Emm mentioned that “If you post a 'morning after the night before' selfie on your Facebook wall…but what if your boss sees it, thereby discovering why you didn't turn up for work today?” I agree with him because of real life experience of mine that I could not turn up in school the next day after a night’s drinking with friends. This made me into a hard situation and I received disciplinary actions from school. One have to be responsible in what he or she posts online, and try not to make it to turn against them even though for that moment it is glorifying by high number of likes and comments.

I do agree with the author to a medium extent, partially due to disagreement with him over privacy issues. One could actually set privacy over the content that they are going to share, be it open to public or open to friends only. If one could control the privacy well enough to allow which group of social media friends could see which kind of contents, the risks could be reduced. Also, the author mentioned leakage of business information that could potentially cause profit loss in companies, this might not be the case. Companies’ internet is stricter than those we get to access at home or in public venues. Together with data protection technologies and code of use of technological products, it is actually extremely difficult to leak any business data from the inside. Don’t even think about logging in to Facebook because the monitoring system in companies’ Internet made it impossible.

In general, this article caters to readers with all kinds of Internet environment. The motive written here is highly desirable by the society, provided that there are many people who do not have Internet safety knowledge. Yet given differences in Internet environment controls, personal usage may not be a huge concern. Therefore, I have a few disagreements with the author but I do think his article will be insightful for many Internet dependents nowadays.

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