Cross-Cultural Impact on Social Networking Sites, Essay Example

Introduction

This is the age of globalization where world has become efficient in the context of robust communication around the world. The cost effective and instant communication over the digitized networks has left other technologies far too behind, thanks to the social networking which enable the humans to communicate in a surprising and innovative way. An idea is available by (Facinelli, 2009) which states it as “user-generated content or consumer-generated media”. A question comes to mind, what is social networking meant for? Its purpose is to enable people for creating a virtual social network to exchange ideas and thoughts with class mates, old friends, lost friends, relatives, and new friends. Social networking sites have advantages as well as disadvantages later to be discussed.

Security Issues 1

The factors impacting on the society are interrelated to each other. The severity of the impact of these sites may vary from severity level 1 to severity level 3. Social networking sites facilitate people to create a public or private profile to share it with a group of people within an isolated system. Likewise, these ‘web based’ services offer opportunities to create a new relation. The first social network site was launched in 1997 that was named as SixDegrees.com. Since then, these sites offered innovation in relationship performances, impression management, privacy management, online and offline status of friends. However, study shows that there is no research on cultural disparity (Vitkauskait?, 2011). Data privacy includes customer personal name, address, contact numbers, secret questions or secret keywords etc. however, there are some websites that provides a comprehensive data privacy page on their websites, but there are also some websites that do not publish any material related to data privacy. This is a big issue, as customers do not know what these websites do when they receive their personal information. However, there are privacy seals on some of the websites supporting e commerce operations. By over sharing, personal information may attract cyber criminals, burglars and even employers who can evaluate values of a person by reviewing comments on the site that may compromise the individual to lose his job. There is no credibility of the user authentication of what they are claiming to be on social networking sites. Users trust textual communication from these social networking sites more than emails. The security of these websites can be compromised anytime and can publish the communication or personal pictures on the web if breached.  However, the integration of email filtering and spam protection is not available on social networks as compared to the traditional email software, which can be integrated with anti-viruses and anti-phishing frauds. Moreover, online users are unaware of the public nature of online profiles generating security risks to the personal and confidential data that can be trade in for various purposes against cash. Social networking profiles are the best sources for cyber criminals to gather information, which can be used for stealing information, for example; birth days, pet names, mothers’ maiden names, secret questions, names of children can be revealed from the interest column of the user profile. By posting personal information, offline crime may result. For example, an individual is discussing a vacation plan and the robbers on the other side planning for home robberies, discussing about the new laptop, which the user has purchased along with the expensive cell phone, which can also result in street crimes. Social networking sites are also concerned with data privacy issues as online user shares lots of personal information on these sites.

Fix 1

Solution for these issues is to restrict privacy settings from being ‘public’ to only those family members, relatives or people who can be trusted i.e. office colleagues, old friends etc.  LinkedIn subscription can be purchased online via credit card, PayPal etc. LinkedIn users receive subscription emails from fake sources that may contain malicious contents. Moreover, when establishing account on twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, form asks to set secret questions and answers to recover passwords. Users must ensure not to provide any information that is previously shared publically.

Security Issue 2

Impact of cyber bullying in society is immense as a woman named as United States Congress House Committee on the Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and, Homeland Security. (2010) Megan Meier created a relationship on MySpace with a fake profile of 16 year old boy. She was accommodated in Missouri, when she hanged herself after reading heart breaking messages. She is now considered as a victim of herself and referred as cyber bullying impersonator herself (Patrick, 2008).

Fix 2

To prevent these incidents, unknown friend request on social networking sites must not be accepted until and unless one personally knows someone.

References

Facinelli, S. (2009). What the heck is “social media?”. Franchising World, 41(7), 40.

Patrick, R. (2008). Cyber harassment jury to be told of megan meier’s suicide.St. Louis Post-Dispatch (MO).

United States Congress House Committee on the Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and,Homeland Security. (2010). Cyberbullying and other online safety issues for children: Hearing before the subcommittee on crime, terrorism, and homeland security of the committee on the judiciary, house of representatives, one hundred eleventh congress, first session, on H.R. 1966 and H.R. 3630, september 30, 2009 U.S. Government Printing Office.

Vitkauskaite, E. (2010). Overview of research on cross-cultural impact on social networking sites. Economics & Management, , 844-848.