Social media Essay Example for Free

Social media EssaySocial media is being integrated in our everyday lives at a rapid pace. Twitter, Facebook, and Myspace hold in become a channel for social interaction, personal identification and network building among society. A students lifespan would be unthinkable without Facebook and small to medium linees for example food trucks would suffer without the enormity of audience volume of social media. These companies have evolved sights lives and business in successful ways, the question remains to ask on how these companies are to remain profitable from idiosyncratics using their services. As Facebook remains to be the top social media portal, the company has many obstacles to overcome when it comes to ethical issues regarding security measure and privacy. Facebook has essentially become a personal identification database. This is very upsetting as personal selective information can easily be accessed or recognized using Facebook. In the past, the company has faced protest and government action as it has practiced foul and deceptive business research practices. The unethical research behavior issue at hand has to do with privacy concerns with its exploiters.The problem involved has to do with users being unaware on how Facebook manages its personal information. The company conducted deceptive practices by not warning users that certain personal information was made general record, which was set to be private by the user. In other results, Facebook, which has almost a billion users worldwide, had allowed advertisers to glean personally identifiable information when a Facebook user clicked on an advertisement on his or her Facebook page. The injured party in facebooks security and privacy breach is the user.The user has personal information that is that intended for his or her private forum. The user should be notified if any personal information is being viewed in a public forum. Also advertiser should not have the capabilities of tracking user information even though the user clicks on advertisements belonging to the company. As a result, the ability to track someone should be off limits. Social media has become a portal for personal information and can be viewed as a spy machine. This in turn could have reckless affects against the user and consumer.The unethical behavior has affected the organization, individual, and society in a spectrum of events. The organization or Facebook was investigated by the Federal Trade commission and was apt(p) a settlement that could result in fines. The government did not find that Facebook intentionally broke the law but moldiness respect the privacy wishes of its users and must adhere to privacy audits the next 20 years. However, within the organization, Facebook potentially could have lost users and faced protest from society for certain products that were resulting in privacy and security concerns.In a report of 23 internet service companies, the watchdog organization Privacy i nternational charged Facebook with severe privacy flaws and put it in the second lowest category for substantial and comprehensive privacy threats (A race to the bottom, 2007) As an individual, the companys unethical behavior is disconcerting and should be more thoroughly recognized when using the Facebooks service. Potentially the information viewed and received can report a lot of about peoples behavior and actions that could lead to further investigation.In a rather benign example, a police officer resorted to searching Facebook after witnessing a grapheme of public urination outside a fraternity house at University of Illinois. Once on Facebook, the officer found the man he was looking for and cited the individual a $145. 00 ticket for public urination. (Dawson, 2007) Additionally, the Patriot Act allows state agencies to bypass privacy settings on Facebook in order to look up potential employees. (NACE public eye online, 2006) The unethical behavior by Facebook has given soci ety a reason to be concerned about the personal information that they may deem as irravalent data.Facebook or the internet for that matter is a spy machine that collects data and can be viewed to the public for research. As technology evolves, a new flap of calculator hacking tools will develop using personal information from social media portals. In a experiment by Missouri student Charlie Rosenbury, who wrote a computer program that enable him to invite 250,000 people to be his friend and 30 percent added him to be his friend. (Jump, 2005) Simarily, the IT firm Sophos set up a fake write to data mine friends for the purpose of identity theft.They found that out of 200 contacted people, 41 percent revealed personal information by either responding to the contact or immediately befriending the fake persona. (Sophos Facebook ID, 2007) The unethical behavior could be avoided or resolved by having safer business practices. Facebook is attempting to profit by large margins from its u sers for advertisement. The company has at take a billion users that could dangle to advertisers for the benefit of profiting in large scales. Facebook has not found a model to ethically keep users information private and increase on the personal information of its users.