Take Facebook as an example again, my friends have uploaded some photos of them which including my face. They have tagged me in order to let the photos appear in my photo album. However, those photos that I didn't want other people to see it and therefore, I just removed tag and I believed the photos would not be shown on my photo album. Although I removed my tag, I did leave some comments on my friends' photos in their photo album. One day, my cousin asked me something about those photos and I was just wondering why she could see those. And finally I discovered that when I left comments the photos even I removed the tags of mine, people could still see the photos of mine. It did shock me!
Since then, I normally do not trust the functions of protecting my privacy. I have a question that when I am going to create a photo album on Facebook, it would provide four options for us to choose the person/persons you want to share the photo album with: Everyone, Friends of friends, Friends only, Customise. Now I wonder if this function really works or not?!
Based on my experience, I don't think it really works. Although you can set "viewed by friends only", your friends' friends can still see your pictures if your friends comment on them. Actually, our privacy can hardly be protected once we connect our pictures or personal informtion to the internet. It is almost impossible. :(
ReplyDeleteThat's very true, Aggie.
ReplyDeleteAlthough technology as well we digital media brings with us a lot of affordances, it may bring with us more constraints than we can image. I got a similar experience and since that I never trust our privacy can be protected on Facebook. The way to protect ourselves, maybe, simply by not uploading personal information or any photos and videos.