These days it’s not unlikely to see one or more people come to a halt, pull out their smart phones and snap a photo to upload, or write a text post on a media platform, and continue about their day. According to Mark Zuckerburg, chairman and CEO of Facebook, social media has, “unlocked a huge amount of potential in terms of people being able to communicate ideas and learn about what’s going on around them.”
What most aren’t aware of, however, is that the sender is also broadcast- ing their location, and more importantly their personal lives to a variety of receivers. With the recent controversy around the National Security Agenies programs and their data storage capabilities, one must ask: How long can these companies and the government hold onto this information? As far back as 2009, Facebook has been selling user content such as updates and photos to marketers.
SnapChat is another company accused of sharing user content. When you take a photograph (or “snap”) you decide how long you want it to be viewable. When sent to a friend, it can be opened viewed for the specified length. After the initial viewing period of the content, it is deleted from SnapChat’s servers and from the receiving mobile device. Or so it claims.
Legal small print on SnapChat’s terms of service shouldn’t really surprise anyone. However, SnapChat retains opened Snaps for a time, contrary?to its stated policy of deleting them once they have been opened. Under special circumstances, law enforcement can determine whether to issue a search warrant for Snaps.
What does this mean for us? As mentioned before, claims to online anonymity and privacy are falling left and right with the revelation of the NSA’s PRISM program.
Additionally, data released by Microsoft’s Redmond Ridge Data Center finds that one in five parents with children under the age of seven allow their children to have unsupervised access to smart phones. Forty percent of parents with children that age allow unsupervised access to computers.
This information comes as a double-edge sword: We must find a way to educate people in media literacy and digital privacy literacy, and not give unregulated attention to computers and technology. The Internet allows for people from an early age to broadcast every thought and action, no matter how premature, which can be saved in a digital arena. This could be a potential danger during future endeavors and interviews.
The sender is primarily responsible for what information is distributed to any number of receivers. However, the moderators and creators of the plat- forms in which this information is being shared must be transparent about how the information is hosted, and who has access, and for how long. We know back doors will be created, but it is the moderator’s responsibility to secure and regulate, not retain and infiltrate. Again, people have the right to know what is happening to their data and metadata.