Guard your information well

Editorial Department • Published 3 Jun 2010 16:00 0 Comments

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Our story on the availability of the personal information of Facebook users on the internet will concern many. While the situation will affect mostly young people, it is their parents who will be particularly concerned.

Due to a security flaw on the social networking site thousands of private photographs, videos and contact details can be viewed by almost anyone on-line with ease.

It's down to the social network's decision to make more of its users' information public right across the web. The Impartial Reporter has found a wealth of private information belonging to local people using the site.

From revealing photographs of drunken nights out on the town to personal photographs of young children. Users' exact whereabouts, home address and contact details have been found as well as a rundown of their every move in the hours, days and weeks ahead. In some cases there's even a GPS (Global Positioning System) tracker function pinpointing the exact location of the user.

As a small community, people are instantly identifiable. Available to the casual browser were details of a teenager openly discussing how drunk she intends to get at her house party later that night, together with the address of her house. There's the family of security personnel posting revealing information, including pictures of their family, their home and its location. There's the middle aged woman pictured lying on the floor of a crowded room with a bottle of vodka in her hand. There's also a video of what appears to be a local man taking illegal party drug mephedrone. Sectarian hatred is being stirred up by posting inappropriate slogans, photographs and violent threats to one another. There are also profiles of young girls pictured wearing very little.

It's enough to make any parent shudder.

Facebook is planning to make changes to its privacy settings very soon. But even when that happens, it is still time to review all the information about ourselves that we put on-line. That amusing photograph of getting up to no good with friends at 16 will seem less amusing when you are 45 and a prospective employer finds it on-line.

That's what happens with the internet. Nothing you key in or post goes. It remains forever in cyberspace.

So youthful indiscretions will come to haunt the adults of the future. It's worth considering this each and every time we reveal a little more about ourselves on the net.

This article appeared in Impartial Reporter 03 Jun 10

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