Privacy

As New Media exponentially expands, our risk of protecting privacy is drastically going up, too. Any activity you do on online become your data. Your Internet browsing history, purchasing history, and engagement on social media pages. Your likes, comments, retweets, posts and shares become your data. Then these social media pages sell these data to the companies who want to analyze the behavior of their customers. According to article, "The Wild West of Privacy", the author wrote that "The companies like Facebook, that collect a hundred different data points, both off-line and online, and create scores and profiles that they sell to anyone who wants to buy them." And, these social media companies do not care where those data are used for.

Another compelling example of privacy problem from New Media is Target. Couple of years ago, Target recognized its 16-year-old customer that she was pregnant from her past purchasing habits. Then, Target kept sending mails, coupons regarding pregnancy, which eventually led her parents to find out about her pregnancy. This is definitely the biggest downturn of New Media. New Media should also provide the users some control of which data they can use. In order to protect the privacy, people should control what their engagement on Internet and be careful with which data that they are providing.