In class tonight, we had two presentations -- one on online dating and one about myspace -- that brought the issue of safety on the Web to the forefront. This also follows Dr. Greenberg's earlier concerns about family photos that were posted on Flickr.
How safe, she asked us, was it to show images of your kids online? Could someone see a photo, determine where the family lived, and target them for a scam or violent crime?
It's certainly possible -- even likely -- I would argue. If someone called me and asked for my name, hometown, zip code, friends' names, hobbies, photos of my family, education level, or workplace, I would immediately suspect either a scam or open identity theft. Yet, people feel perfectly free to post all this information online for the taking -- for anyone to see. Is our society so disconnected we feel this uncontrollable urge to tell everyone out there every little detail about us? Or are we just very trusting?
There's also the issue of predation, which has sparked lawsuits against online dating sites and myspace. MSNBC ran a story about a girl right up the road in Austin. (You can read it here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13437619/)
In the meantime, even though we've been asked to put in photos with most of our blog entries, I'm sticking with anonymous-looking images like this one. Guess which one's me!
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