Online identity is the persona that is presented to the world on the internet. An organization will be very stringent about what and who present aspects of the organization to the world.
People allow different degrees of intrusion to their privacy. As Pearson (2009, p. 72) states:
“The excessively prudent opt out. The moderately prudent shut the hell up. The extraverts gamble on un-interest or an implausibly generous reception.”
Information used to be gathered by big brother and tucked away in government databases. Now it is big business that is doing the gathering.
Teens (major users of Facebook) have addressed the issue of privacy with a shift to privacy pragmatism where a social benefit outweighs the loss of some privacy. (Raynes-Goldie, 2010, para 18) Teens managed such things as inappropriate friend requests and managed privacy by using an alias or often deleting wall posts and photo tags. (Raynes-Goldie, 2010, para 10-11) Facebook is necessary since the social consequence of not being on is being left out of the communication loop. (Raynes-Goldie, 2010, para 22)
Adults considering privacy issues have a broader range of concerns. Activities online range from banking, investment, homes emails (very private), to search engines, social networking sites, social media, online books stores ( less private), and library websites (least private). (De Rosa, Cantrell, Havens, Hawk, & Jenkins, 2007, p. 3.8) In a survey of over 10,000 comments very few respondents indicated concerns of privacy from non-fraudulent sources. (De Rosa, et al., 2007 p. 3.7)
However, every time an action occurs online it is recorded somewhere. So care needs to be taken that financial information doesn’t go over an unsecured line, that personal details such as a home address or private telephone number isn’t placed in a public forum, that teens are taught to be circumspect in what they put on their profiles and that they don’t accept friend s in a social networking site if they aren’t familiar with them and children that they shouldn’t go online without adult approval. Institutions have rules and policies concerning information being made public and people need to make rules as well.
Reference
De Rosa, C., Cantrell, J., Havens, A., Hawk, J. & Jenkins, L. (2007). Section 3: Privacy, Security and Trust. In Sharing privacy and trust in our networked world: A report to the OCLC membership. Dublin, Ohio: OCLC. http://www.oclc.org/reports/pdfs/sharing_part3.pdf
Pearson, J. (2009). Life as a dog: Personal identity and the internet. Meanjin, 68(2), 67-77. Retrieved from http://search.informit.com.au/fullText;dn=200906244;res=APAFT
Raynes-Goldie, K. (2010). Aliases, creeping, and wall cleaning: Understanding privacy in the age of Facebook, First Monday, 15(1), 4 January. Available http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2775/2432
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