Paris Hilton, image source: mashable 2008The web does modify the traditional paradigm of the way people socializing with others, as we can witness the emergence of social networking sites such as facebook, friendster, myspace, flickr (mainly for sharing pictures). According to Walsh, paradigm shift has filled our environment with multimodality, the mixture if visual, electronic and digital text.
Among all social networking sites, Facebook is generally perceived to be the safest. However, the recent loophole in Facebook’s photo album give us a lesson of privacy. Faceebook loophole was revealed by Bryan Ng (2008), Vancouver computer technician, who managed to gain access to someone’s private photo by manipulating web address and appear as the friend of that person. He successfully viewed private photos uploaded in Mark Zuckerberg (the founder of Facebook), Paris Hilton, and Nicole Rithcie profiles.
Jeremiah Grossman (2008), chief technology officer at a Web application security company, says the bottom line in sharing or uploading something online is we publicise it therefore it is no longer private regardless any privacy guarantee. Whereas Reddick and King (2001, p. 19) describe internet as a cyberspace world where nobody owns it, or strictly controls, governs or even takes responsibility for it.
In terms of personal safety in the cyberspace, Dearnley and Feather (2001, p. 38) state there is no absolute beneficial or malicious in the internet, what matters are how society embrace the era of paradigm shift and make use of it for a good reason. Therefore, the recent security loophole case of Facebook can better be a lesson for us to learn and be more alert of any of the consequence of uploading something online.
references:
Auchard, E, March 19 2008, Face book tries to win back trust on privacy, viewed 5 june 2008.
Dearnley, J Feather, J 2001, ‘Chapter 2: A new technology for information’ in The Wired World: An introduction to the theory and practice of the information society, Library Association Publishing, LondonNicole, K, March 24 2008, Private zuckerberg and paris Hilton private pict accessed on face book, viewed 5 june 2008.
March 25, 2008 06:58pm, 'Private' photos made public on Facebook', viewed 5 june 2008.
Reddick, R, King, E, 2001, The Online Journalist: Using the internet and other electronic resources, 3rd edn, Harcourt College Publisher, United State of America.
Walsh,M 2006, The ‘textual shift’: Examining the reading process with print, visual and multimodal texts, Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, vol. 29, no. 1, pp.24-37.
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