Monday 14 March 2011

In the future everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes.

Not my favourite Warhol quote but very apt for the phenomena of the entertainment industry, and Youtube. Not that I am condoning the embarrassing Youtube videos which haunt my past. Whilst on the subject of haunting, did you know that even after you die, your facebook account is never completely deleted. You may be able to deactivate your account but your information will never be deleted from their databases.



This brings me onto the topic of privacy, Charles Fried (1968) defined privacy as the “control over knowledge about oneself”, but how much knowledge about our self can we actually control?  Have we actually given thought to the consequences of our Facebook accounts into our future life? But also there is that of which is beyond our control. So we have all heard of the data protection act that makes sure anyone who has access to our personal information must conform to specific laws. So we're sorted right?

Well what about something a lot more unobtrusive? Something that many of us are unaware of, and the majority of the time goes unnoticed?  I’m talking about Cookies, pieces of information generated by a web server and stored in your computer. They are used to personalize web search engines and store shopping lists of items while browsing. So what’s the problem? Through Cookies the latest marketing rage is electronic eavesdropping. And although suggesting that I try an anti ageing cream at the tender age of 19, after reading an article for my mini dissertation is not harmful, it is questioning our privacy. Questions are being raised, “Why are you showing me this ad? What is it you know? What else have you found out?”

 

Apps like Facebook and MySpace have completely destroyed any element of privacy, with many of us logging in on public servers, and without our knowledge our history is being saved. The bottom line is private life is no longer private; it’s strewn all over blogs, social networks, gmails, etc. It’s not a massive issue, the argument being;






My worries are what happens when your privacy is completely invaded, and your information sold on? Lycos Inc. A search engine and established web portal, have stated the aim of creating a tracking system which would create highly detailed profiles of user’s search patterns. They would do this by matching the cookie identification with a user profile, the user's past search history can be accessed by the web server. If these search profiles were to be resold, the user's patterns of research would be immediately apparent. If any form of identification were linked to these profiles it might prove a serious invasion of user privacy.

Why get all hot and bothered over target advertising? With the increasing commercial applications of the Internet, it was probably inevitable that cookies would quickly be utilized for advertising purposes. Since cookies can be matched to the profile of a user's interests and browsing habits, they are a natural tool for the "targeting" of advertisements to individual users.

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