Privacy Issues and Settings

I think the most important privacy issue for me would just surround the entire idea of what information I am sharing and what information people are viewing about me. Over the last year or so I have really tried to make my privacy settings on facebook strict or at least so I feel comfortable with what people can view and what they cannot. I have my settings so when someone searches me if they are not my friend they only have the option to add me or send me a message, generally if those settings are not changed, people can view an entire profile, pictures and friend lists without being a friend. As well I make sure when I make a photo album to have the settings where only my friends can view them and I even have certain people that I do not let see certain albums just because of the relationship I have with them. A couple months ago I was tagged in over 1500 photos and over time I have cut that amount down to about 500 which is still a great amount. I try as well to delete old photo albums I have or the ones that do not have full albums. I love taking pictures and photography has always been an interest of mine, but there is a different between nice photographs and ones of the party on the weekend. I had over 100 albums at one point and I am trying to slowly reduce that number but it does get hard. I have many friends who like the amount of pictures tagged of them, so if I delete an album, they loose 20 tags. Pictures on facebook is kind of scary because people can simply save any picture they see, there is no program or system that prevents people from doing this. Although it helps when friends want pictures of themselves or what not, those people who are random friends can be racking up a collection of your photos without you knowing. I also occasionally go through my friends list and see which people I actually talk to or have in the past over facebook and the ones that have added me or I have added them just for the sake of knowing them through either school or mutual friends. I make sure to remove those people because I feel they really do not need to see my profile or any part of it if I do not even talk to them. My facebook page does however give information about myself under favourite music, movies, quotes, interests and about me, although it is not necessarily accurate. I am sure people can gain some sort of opinion toward me because of this information but I rarely update or change it and when I do it is into something silly or ridiculous. Even though privacy is important to me I try to keep things secure and at the same time be open enough so that the people I do care about and are important are able to see things about me and that those who I am not as close with cannot gain too much information.

Search Words/Search Engines

The activity we did in class when looking at different peoples search history and trying to come up with a profile or personal sketch for them was interesting because although a lot of the chosen people seemed to have fairly weird and unheard of search histories, there are many ways that people can take what others search. I couldnt specifically look at my own history but I have ideas of what I search for and I don’t really know what types of profiles others would make about me based around what I search. Generally my searches are song titles or lyrics, recipes, random facts and pieces of information, definitions and as well anything that I must search academically for school work. I think my searches all together seem like a very random selection of information. For third parties, I don’t know how valuable my information would be, only if I had constantly searched something for a couple days straight or was really interested in the information I was finding there might be a better chance that third parties could target certain information in my direction. I chose to search Scuba Diving as my keyword, I used google and the first result that comes up is the from Wikipedia, which I was expecting to happen because I feel wikipedia is one of the top results for most searches. After that is the PADI website which is the Prossesial Association of Diving Instructors and is the main network and resource for almost all diving today. It seems appropriate that that would be the second result because for almost all information on diving, it can be found on the PADI website. The following results are specific magazines, dive shop locations and different diving stores. I do not really know what information is missing, or what I did not find/what did not come up. It seems that the information results were in order of detailed information. Wikipedia usually gives a general overview of certain searches and for scuba diving it would give the history or background, where it is today, the best places and such. While the PADI website it more directed to divers and people interested in diving, so more information on how to get certified, the best shops to go to, the best locations for seeing certain things, the levels of diving training you can get and so on. I think for someone who would search scuba diving, they would get all the information they need, if not they would probably need to specify more what they were lookng for.

LinkedIn

http://www.linkedin.com/profile?viewProfile=&key=43540572&trk=tab_pro

I was expecting LinkedIn to be a very different layout and system. The idea of an online resume makes a lot of sense in that it is really easy for companies to recrute you and look over your resume and get easily contacted by them for a job possibility that would be of interest. Though I thought it was a little strange to have to fill out all the different sections of a resume individually. I was expecting there to be a place to simply upload your own resume that kept the same style and layout and people could open it if they wanted to get more detail. I made my account semi-private, when first joining it asked what sorts of things I was looking for and what things I would want people looking for in my profile. After narrowing those down I feel as though I made appropriate choices. Whether or not I will keep the online profile up there is still something I need to figure out. For all I know I could get a really good opportunity through LinkedIn or at least connect with co-workers and people working under the same company as me. As well I feel as though it is potentially really helpful for wanting a reference later on as past co-workers may have their contact information on their own profiles. The only thing stopping me from that aspect of benefits is that for contacting past co-workers I think that should be done through other means, not a website for job opportunity. It does not seem really personal and although there are benefits to having an online profile many times, a cover letter, walk in or email is a much better way to basically sell yourself to a job rather than having your resume posted online.

Photoblog

I checked out some photoblogs on Flikr that were posted on one of my facebook friends wall (funny how facebook helped me out with this).  All of the pictures that were posted looked very professionally done and it was clear that this person was really into photography as they had a ton of albums. I has anticipated more blogging and comments on the pictures but I feel as though this person was using Flickr Blog as more of a photo album rather than a blog. There were descriptions and details of who were in the photos and where they were taken, but beyond that the user did not really have anything else to say. I guess it can be used for different things and people will use the photoblogs in differing ways, especially if they are apart of other social networks. Keeping up with all user accounts from several networks seems tedious and time consuming so it makes sense that if this person has facebook and is constantly keeping up with it that they would only use the photoblog for the sharing of their photos.

Social Bookmarking?

The whole idea of the social bookmarking sites to me seems somewhat unnecessary. I’m not one to bookmark or add sites to my favourites anyways, so to create an account on a site like Delicious, I had nothing to add to it. My tool bar now has all these buttons and functions that I have no idea how to use because I don’t bookmark at all. I think that social bookmarking is more for a person who actually does bookmark their sites and that way it helps to keep them organized and as well share their findings with the public, especially on a hot topic. I sat at my computer for awhile trying to think of favourite sites I visited or good information I found to add to my bookmarking account, but nothing came to mind, it was a much harder task than I thought. Looking back on it now and trying to find sites today to add, I still can’t. I guess it just seems silly to me to add the sites I visit most often because they are my email accounts. There is the odd horoscope page or review of movies or television shows, but nothing that jumps out at me saying “this would be good to share with the public!”. I do not think my social bookmarking will go any farther than the tool bar slapped above the URL space. It’s just one of those internet functions I do not understand.

Nexus

I found this really strange to do and I definatly did not understand it until I fiddled around with it for a bit. It surprised me at first that when I looked at who I had the most similarities with as it ended up being someone I hardly talk to anymore. It makes more sense now as the top 15 or so people on that list were all from my highschool where many facebook groups were made which is also the similarities we had. It wasn’t until scrolling down to about the 15th person that we had a keyword in common. I feel as though the graph may have been more appropriate and close to my social network if it included wall posts, or tagged pictures. Just matching similarities through groups and keywords does not define what I believe my social network is at all, as I rarely go through my groups and am in 64. When looking at the other social network with the cirlce tables because I was making it myself I chose the people I put in the different circles depending on when they came to mind and there was no chance that most of the friends I have on facebook would even make it on to this social network table as I simply did not think of them. The people who are my close ties were mostly those that I only see about once a month and I generally connect to them through phone (text messaging included). The others within that category are people I see almost everyday and generally have F2F conversations or connect through internet and phone. As the ties become farther apart, the people are those who I rarely get to see or see at random times and generally connect only through internet and F2F when I happen to see them. I found that most of the people that are on this table are friends on facebook but when thinking about them I hardly ever speak to them on facebook. Most of the people on the table I can be very close with at times but depending on how often we connect, the more I am able to connect with someone the closer our ties will get. After doing this, it makes me want to call everyone I have on my table just to say hi.

ICT’s

So as we were instructed to do, I thought about how often I use ICT’s day to day and for what reasons. I found that I use them quite often and of coarse some days more than others, mostly using my cellphone or computer. I counted the amount of text messages I send a day and it probably averages out to 30 a day which really surprised me and I almost want to cut that number down. Most of the time it is to quickly answer questions from friends or make plans for the day or days to follow. It may be catching up with someone or just saying Hi to someone I rarely get to see. When I think about it, without my cellphone I would have to wait to be face to face with the person or wait to use a landline to call them. Text messaging is a really quick and easy way to communicate with someone. I probably could have waited to see most of the people I messaged or not even messaged at all because the content is completely pointless. It has become obvious that ICT’s play a huge role in my life and I think I would have a hard time if I suddenly had to cut them out because I have become so use to using them and have become some what dependent on them. Thinking about ICT’s has really showed that to many people the information society plays a huge role in their lives and many people become dependent on using them day to day and mutliple times a day. If we were to suddenly lose our ICT’s I feel as though many people would be lost and not really know what to do with themselves. It seems a little silly that we base our lives around something like this, but we seem to have grown up in a world that needs ICT’’s and the information society as a whole.

Hi Bloggers. So I am in the media, culture & society stream of communications at Brock. I love scuba diving, I think it’s probably the most peaceful place I have ever been. Everything that you can see beneath the surface is amazing. I am also really into music, I love pretty much everything, and my library is constantly growing with new things I hear. Blogging is pretty new to me so hopefully it goes well.

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