July 2007 Entry 2
The first lesson for online privacy: If you want to keep a secret from someone, don't put it on a public website. Students at Oxford are the most recent people to learn that once you put something online it is, for the most part, visible to the world. According to Telegraph.co.uk, students are complaining because pictures on their Faceboook pages are being used to show they took part in "anti-social behavior" when celebrating the end of exams. For all the details, here is the link:
[url=http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/07/18/noxford118.xml new=true]Oxford Faces on Facebook[/url]
The simple truth is, Facebook, Myspace, etc are not private, and are not intended to be. If you don't want your college dean or university president to know how, when, and maybe why you are doing something they think you shouldn't, don't put it on any webpage, but especially not on any type of networking site - you know, networking, the practice of exposing your credentials to as many people as possible so they may someday be able to help you out, and you may be able to help them out. I have to wonder, what credentials did those students think they were putting up when they posted the damaging pictures?
Don't get me wrong. I do think Oxford stepped out of bounds, and took things out of context, but it has been made amply clear in recent years that you can't take back what you post on the internet. And you can't control who will get to see it. So if you insist on posting pictures of your wild parties on Facebook, expect your face to get noticed by someone you don't want noticing it.
Moral of the story? If you wouldn't want your parents to know about it, don't put it on line. They might not see it, but someone else will, and will show it to your parents. Or your university.
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