Networks put privacy at risk – HeraldSun

SOCIAL networking sites have allowed millions of users around the world to become their own PR agents, according to a former privacy adviser to US President Barack Obama.

peaking before a major privacy conference in Melbourne next week, the former US federal trade commissioner and adviser to Facebook on privacy issues said the explosive growth of social networking had redefined the meaning of privacy in the modern world.

“You have 16-year-old skateboarders who are their own PR agency posting photographs and information about themselves online,” he said. “It’s a very different kind of world.”

Thompson said with the average 30-year-old now owning a BlackBerry or iPhone as well as being regular Facebook and Twitter users, their expectations are high.

“They expect to send and receive information in real time and expect a response. People are now more actively involved in editing themselves online,” he said.

With more information available than ever before, Mr Thompson said everyone needed to seriously think about how privacy was defined and policed.

“Our thirst for information means social media is playing a huge role in politics and current affairs,” he said.

The social networking phenomenon now has more than 300 million active users around the world, six million of them in Australia.

Facebook is the third most visited site on the web and soaks up more than a quarter of the time Australians spend on the internet.

Mr Thompson said government and regulators were still wrestling with the enormous implications of social media.

“Governments are beginning to use sites such as Facebook to update people about issues like bushfires and swine flu because that’s where people are,” he said.

HeraldSun Network put privacy at risk.