Social networking  has become a personal issue; or more precisely, a question of data and personal information. Billions of names, last names and addresses included in the appropriate registration forms and many life stories written in blogs and gathered on servers around the world. The problem of the diffusion of personal identity becomes increasingly impressive and goes hand in hand with the increase of  social networking of every kind scattered throughout the internet.

On the one hand we have the eternal problem of advertising.

Internet collects an increasing amount of advertising. Rupert Murdoch, who acquired MySpace in 2005, seems convinced to be able to attract the same  audience, in terms of numbers, collected today by Fox television network,  in just a  few years. But the new frontier of online advertising is not only about  quantity. If TV audience involves a dispersion of messages to a mass of useless contacts, internet aimed towards accurately profiled users, not only demographically.  Hobbies, personal tastes, opinions and lifestyles: an entire private world made available to the scare user businesses and institutions. The flop faced by  Facebook with the Beacon advertising platform  is a concrete example of attention that today  mail users reserve in the protection of their data and of the intolerance expressed towards invasive advertising.

But the advertising related issues are minor when compared to the debate on information security published by minors.

Adolescents are among the major users of social networking. Approximately 90% of teenagers who surf the Internet become part of a community: they publish thoughts, photographs, films, tell of friends and family.  However, they often do not realise the possible consequences of releasing such information which becomes  indelible and usable by anyone at any time.  Repubblica.it described the phenomenon in an articolo by Paolo Pontoniere: in the United States many parents have lost their jobs or have been arrested as a result of scandalistic  revelations written on the Internet by their children, and although 65% of young surfers are aware of the risk,  many are not blocking access to outsiders. Even the practice of creating a false and fictitious personality does not seem to shelter you from the Internet security expert investigators.

How to solve the problem?

The United States are aware of the increasingly urgent need to monitor online activities of minors. In an article by Susan B. Barnes (A privacy paradox: social networking in the Unites States) pubblished on Firstmonday the author  writes that the United States seem to be geared towards a resolution of the problem on three different levels: spanning social, technical and legal solutions.  Experts agree on the need to begin with  families: parents are recognized as being  primarily responsible for the behaviour of their children, even in their “virtual life”. In the second instance it is the companies that manage some of the larger social networks of the world that are studying ways to better protect their users. MySpace also addresses the problem by launching safety campaigns online for the younger users.

But all of this doesn’t seem to be enough if the problem isn’t tackled from a legal point of view. The  proposal for an Internet Bill of Rights prepared during  the durante the Internet Governance Forum in  Rio de Janeiro last November, would satisfy this requirement, as long as it is recognized as a  globally valid document that supersedes  all national barriers.  The regulation of the greatest public space that man has ever known through universal laws that grant internet users the status of digital citizen: this seems to be the solution to privacy related issues.

Claudia Saputo
Ciaopeople Staff

The Machine is Us/ing Us by Micheal Wesch, Kansas State University

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