With the rise in the popularity of social networking sites (SNS), the issue of online identity is one which bears some considered thought. How an individual or organisation portrays themselves online has implications. Should a profile be a brutally honest portrayal of you or should some things be kept personal?
For an organisation the answer to this question is fairly simple, its online profile should provide an honest and accurate picture. Goodwill, or trust, in the business world is essential if the business wants to grow and be successful. Word of mouth is a powerful force for any organisation and if users discover an organisation’s online profile doesn’t match the reality then that news will spread like wildfire across the vastness of the online world and potential users may be turned off of dealing with the entity.
In addition organisations need to consider who is viewing their online profile. Are there levels of information which need to quarantined or should it all be freely available to whoever wishes to view it. Organisation should certainly consider if they need to institute levels of access. For example setting security levels so that staff only information is truly only available to staff. As for other information which an organisation may want to only be accessed by some users then that too needs the appropriate security applied so that only the relevant users can access the information.
The situation is similar in some ways for individuals. People with obviously fake profiles can be viewed critically by others who wonder what they have to hide. Conversely, individuals may wish to not overly identify themselves due to the permanency and mine-ability of online information. On most SNS users can select a variety of privacy controls to restrict who sees what on their profile. However these controls do not stop the owner of the SNS from storing this information to use when and how they want. Take Facebook for example, it recently trumpeted 500 million users, that’s a lot of information about a lot of people that can be used how Facebook wants if they think they will get away with it.
Of course it could be argued that with that many people on Facebook that surely there is some safety in the sheer volume of information collected. Not only does your data get lost in the multitude but the multitude help to play guardian against mis-use by Facebook. In addition there are many profiles, mine included, which aren’t used by just one person. This means any data collected ultimately is not going to be a fully accurate portrayal of the person it is meant to represent which means the data always has a question of quality attached to it.
At the end of the day I think it comes down to an individual or organisation taking responsibility. Individuals and organisation alike need to be aware the potential consequences of any information they publish, not only in terms of how they appear to others but also as to how that information could be used by third parties. Life is full of choices and how much we participate in the online world is up to us, so we should make the effort to be fully informed and then make considered decisions about what we will or won’t post online.
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