PRIVACY

In 2005, researcher Frederic Stutzman looked at how social networking communities (SNC) such as MySpace, Facebook and Friendster present opportunities for sharing identity information. These sites, being most popular with undergraduate students, as it allows them to form a network within their particular institution.

However sharing information can lead to several situations including stalking and identity fraud.

Stutzman’s study, conducted in America, looked at the SNC’s which students in particular participate in, and the information they disclose. The most popular network accessed amongst students was Facebook. Facebook users are able to disclose information ranging from their name and age, to their relationship status and political views.

Graph showing information disclosure by students (Used with the permission of Frederic Stutzman)

The website IdentityTheftFixes.com reveals that people are often not aware of the potential risk they put themselves in by revealing certain information (Hunter, 2006). A the site states, even leaving a comment on a friends page, stating that you’re going on a holiday, can place you at risk by providing valuable information to a criminal, who after browsing other sites, may be able to piece together your address.

A quantitative content analysis was conducted by Sameer Hinduja and Justin W. Patchin this year. They see identity as being crucial to the subject of adolescent participation in online social interaction. Cyberspace allows teens to define themselves through values, believes and religion with a sense of anonymity. The study found that the exponential growth of myspace was fuelled by a specific demographic group of teenagers.

Perhaps anonymity is not the correct word because research has shown that the boundaries of anonymity are very blurred when it comes to the internet. The study revealed that with regard to personal information, almost 40% of the profiles included the youth’s first name, and approximately 9% included their full name. 40% of adolescents restricted their profiles so that only friends could access their contents and very small percentage revealed their phone number. Over 81% of adolescent users included their current city while 28% also listed their school. Less than 9% of youth included their full name (38% listed their first name) and approximately 57% included a photograph of themselves (including over 5% wearing a swimsuit or underwear). (Hinduja and Patchin 2007). Also many teens present themselves in a favourable light to gain recognition from their friends and even strangers. Although they may feel as though they are creating this image in private for friends, myspace and other social networking sites have global access.

The internet: a gateway to millions of people and profiles…

 

 

Resources:

Hinduja, S., & Patchin, J. W. (2007). Personal Information of
adolescents on the Internet: A quantitative content analysis of MySpace. Journal of Adolescence, 2007.05.004.

, “An Evaluation of Identity-Sharing Behavior in Social Network Communities”, School of Information and Library Science, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2005, Full Text

Hunter, Jessica, ‘Identity Theft and MySpace, Your Online Habits Can Put You at Greater Risk of Identity Theft’ Posted October 9 2006 URL:http://www.identitytheftfixes.com/identity_theft_and_myspace.html.