Privacy we should play around it.

Looking back in 2003 or 2004 when the social networking site called "Cyworld" was enjoying its heyday in Korea, I remember my friend talking about her future blind date. When you think of "blind date," you are not supposed to know about the opposite person, right? 

But my friend got his name and his age from somewhere and went to cyworld website. Cyworld offers a feature of finding people. If you enter the person's name and the year the person was born, it gives all the cyworld users. For example, if I enter "Eun Sook Kwon and 1982," it gives all Eun Sook Kwon's cyworld accounts who was born in 1982. So, what she did was to drop by all cyworld whose name and age matched with him. She found his cyworld and she went through it. She saw his pictures, profile and some comments with his friends. She seemed to like his appearance. 

On the blind dating day, she was excited to see him, but when she came back, she was very disappointed. His face was not like the picture she saw on his cyworld. He posted all photoshopped pictures. 

Does this example apply to you?How do you use our social networking sites? Well, this week our reading is about privacy. Yes, the privacy is something really important and we should take it as serious. But don't you know your privacy is leaking and you can control your privacy in those social networking site? 

We're telling people what our personal stuff, aren't we? Think about the Twitters, Facebook, Myspace, LinkedIn, and you name it. In Twitter, you tell people whatever you do and it doesn't matter whether other people are listening or not. In Facebook or Myspace, it's all same thing. Even people know whether you broke up with someone, right after you really did. It's very personal. 

But on the opposite side, you know your information is out is in public. Now you play around it. Like my friend did, I only post on my cyworld something nicer and better things. 

On April 1st, I went to Communication Career Fair and one of the employer said I should connected in LinkedIn. I didn't know about it and recently, I started to using it. I'm sure all of you know what it is, right? It's a business-oriented social networking site. You use it for searching for jobs, internships, or looking up the future employer's information.

I'm sure I'll put the information that makes me look nice and more attractive for the job. 

I think because of those social networking sites, you should control well so any personal information goes public. 

Is this too cliche? 

Anyway, I found a blog talking about the privacy on the social networking sites. Click to read, Learning curve