Your privacy is your responsibility

Eric Schmidt has got the media very excited over the past twenty four hours about privacy and people's information being freely available on the internet. As many have suggested, his comments are a little ironic to say the least but I get the feeling it's all a storm in a virtual teacup - people changing their names to escape their cyber past, surely that's part of a Philip K Dick plot! I believe in common sense and I hope it prevails.

I didn't catch the whole piece but Channel 4 News spent far too long debating the issue last night. One commentator particularly caught my ear when he pronounced that the platforms, Facebook in particular, should be taking more responsibility, educating users better and basically not allowing this type of data to be available at all - and so I shouted at the television. If users of social media are not intelligent enough to see the risks for themselves then maybe they deserve all they get. Controversial? Perhaps. Encouraging people to take responsibility for their own actions? Definitely.

The only exception to my harsh view is for those users who are actually too young to know any better but then it is parents who should have some control and knowledge of how their children are using the internet. At the very least, parents and guardians should be educating minors about the dangers, explaining to them why it's not very smart for everyone to know everything about you. The concerns go beyond the fear of not knowing who you're talking to and I find it disappointing that it may actually take this media furore for many people to take a little bit more notice of their own or their children's actions.

It only takes a moment to check your Facebook privacy settings every once in a while - so go do it now. The new Places application means a new setting has popped up in there so make sure the only people able to see where you are, are the people you choose, not everyone in the world!

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