A Bit of Laundry Talk

One of my close friends recently joined Facebook and it came as a surprise to me because I actually thought she had long been a member until one day, I realized I got a friend request from her. After all, all of the people who comprised my entire high school posse were on the social networking site.

I went to her page and posted a message on her wall and noticed that instead of her trademark grin on the profile picture box, I saw a photo of her cat (which she eventually replaced with a picture of Scrat this weekend).

I texted her, asking why she did not post a picture of herself. She answered that she was not so comfortable about posting pictures online and was rather wary about the idea.

That brought me back to an article in the newspaper about two or three weeks ago. The article carried a warning that if anyone was on the prowl for a new job, it was time to start sifting through the Facebook photos on his profile as some employers had resorted to checking out the profile pages and photos of their applicants. Employers still banked on character references but did supplement their decisions as to who should be hired by poring through the online photos and posts of the applicants in a bid to really dig deeper int the person's background. Some employers admitted that they had decided not to hire certain people whose profiles featured pictures which were less than ideal.

I guess people have been so used to posting their pictures and videos online and writing on their blogs that they sometimes forget that the world has now become their stage and their audience. It is very easy to forget that whatever we upload online, no matter how seemingly harmless or innocent they may seem at a particular moment, may be utilized for the wrong purpose and with the most malicious of motives. That brought back the memory of watching the old Sandra Bullock starrer "The Net." I remember watching the events unfold in the movie and I was just thinking "Is this actually possible?" Now Iknow it is. This is akin to a question posed by a speaker in a lecture on Electronic Evidence which I attended a few weeks back: can the right to privacy still be claimed to have been violated if such abuses happen?

I agree with her that in such situations, when we lower our shields and our filters, there can be no valid claim of a violation of the right to privacy. We have supplied the world with enough potential fodder because we have not completely realized that the circles we move around in have expanded to a different realm. After all, it is a good thing to have a much wider audience at your fingertips just as long as you are aware of that and that you have anticipated and are prepared for the ramifications of hanging a clothesline in cyberspace.