2010-07-30 11:10:10
WAM Abu Dhabi, Jul 30th, 2010 (WAM) -- " You cannot complain of heat after stepping into the kitchen. In the age of Google when every click of your mouse is recorded and every word you key in is noted by Big brothers sitting thousands of miles away in the distant Silicon Valley in America, perhaps no one of us can claim to be safe anymore. Big brother is indeed watching!", wrote a UAE news paper in its editorial today.

Khaleej Times' comment came as the most popular social networking website, Facebook, came under fire all over again as personal details of over hundred million Facebook users were published online by a security consultant Ron Bowes outraging millions of users worldwide.

Bowes says he used a simple code to scan FB profiles, collecting data not hidden by the users' privacy settings. The list, put online as a downloadable file, contains the URL of every "searchable" FB user profile, their name and unique ID. The file is available on the Pirate Bay, the world's largest file-sharing website, and is being downloaded by thousands of inquisitive and curious Internet users as you read this. Bowels claims he has "hacked" the FB data only to highlight digital privacy issues and how individual privacy rights are being undermined by social networking sites like FB. However, in its defence, FB says Bowels didn't "reveal" anything new as all that data is already in public domain and is freely available for anyone to access; noted the paper.

In a statement after the data release, FB promoters argue that people who use Facebook own their information and have the right to share only what they want, with whom they want, and when they want. "No private data is available or has been compromised," they insist. Perhaps both Bowels and FB are right in their arguments, the paper added.

"However, the controversy has certainly and rightly turned the spotlight on the bigger issue of individual privacy rights in the age of Internet", it commented.

Some use it to promote what they strongly believe in. Yet others abuse the freedom FB offers to outrage and hurt others (For instance, the recent invitation to draw Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, which sparked the FB ban call in Pakistan and other Muslim countries.), the paper noted as the FB popularity continued to grow crossing the incredible mark of 500 million users last week.

While FB perhaps rightly insists that the users' privacy is in their own hands, many of the ordinary users are not familiar with the pitfalls of putting everything online. This is what makes it so hazardous and perhaps exciting to some, the paper said.

"This is why networking websites and other similar outfits need to educate and caution their users more strongly on the hazards of putting sensitive data online. Besides, they must introduce necessary safeguards and firewalls to prevent outsiders from launching more such invasions of privacy", opined the paper.

For once people are hooked on to sites like FB and Myspace, it's almost impossible to get them over them. The intoxication of compulsively updating their "status" and letting the rest of the world know what they are doing or not doing every second of every minute is almost too much to resist, the paper added.

In the process, they seldom notice the dangers lurking in the wings. While we are all for freedom on the Web, perhaps governments ought to step in and do more to ensure individual freedoms and private data are not abused by all sorts of characters stalking out there in cyberspace.

"That said, all social networkers on the Web, and all Internet users for that matter, must realise that ultimately they are responsible for their privacy and protection of sensitive data" warned the paper.

WAM/AB