Cecelia Kang’s Washington Post article about privacy highlighted the issues that have emerged with social media and devices that are equipped with GPS technology. Often times, children and adolescents are the most vulnerable when it comes to security issues. Lawmakers and privacy and security experts have spent a great deal of time and resources advocating for increased security measures those who use social media or apps that track location and other sensitive information.
To me, this is all kind of ridiculous. People are working to advocate for changes to protect us … from ourselves? If you don’t want people to know your location, don’t “check in”. If you don’t want your credit card info out there, don’t enter it. It’s simple and common sense. As for companies taking advantage of children and adolescents who don’t yet understand the gravity of privacy, there is also a pretty simple answer. Like the last example in the article states, parents or guardians or whoever is responsible for a child should also be responsible for protecting that child online. Don’t give your kid your credit card number if you don’t want people to know it, don’t give your kid a smart phone and let them “check-in” everywhere and anywhere if you don’t want people to know where they are. It all seems pretty standard, and pretty common sense. I don’t know why a lawmaker needs to step in. Be responsible for yourself and those who you are responsible for, if you are, the likelihood of negative repercussions is going to be reduced.
From a public relations point of view, practitioners have the responsibility of upholding ethical standards at all times. Dealing with mobile apps is not without ethical implications and best practices should always be followed.
I couldn't agree more. I feel like our online identities are functionally no different than our real world ones. In both worlds we keep some information private, others we expose. On another level sometimes things we keep very private (don't upload, don't bring up) still become exposed. There is no unique harm to online privacy accept that it reaches more people. If you make the same decisions with your virtual identity as your real world one there would be no issue. For some reason people feel entitled to censor themselves less yet suffer no consequences on-line, when never has an example of that existed in human history, and logically seems silly.
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