Modern Civilization – where privacy and safety live no more

Do you remember a time when there was a home phone that everyone in the family shared? If some guy was calling your daughter, everyone knew because anyone could answer the phone, no secrets. If your son was supposed to be home by 10, he’d be home because he couldn’t use the excuse that he “tried to call to say he was running late but his battery was dead”.Nowadays there are mobile phones and every member of the household who can form a sentence has one.

Do you track your kids via GPS? How do you know somebody else isn’t tracking them? You can be sure that marketers are using this same technology to develop highly targeted advertising. According to a recent study, almost 70 percent of teenagers have included their physical location in their social networking status update. What happened to privacy? What happened to safety? If you really think you need this technology, you should at least set the privacy settings to the strictest level.

Ok so maybe you don’t use tracking software but surely you use Bluetooth. You can share family photos and videos with it. You can even send your son a copy of the chemistry lecture you downloaded from Youtube for him. Bluetooth is great but did you know that it can help people to hack into your mobile phone?

Do you allow your kids to post pictures or videos on the internet? Judging from the number of such files found online, its clearly normal and acceptable to share visual representations of ourselves with the world. But getting back to you personally, Are you aware of the content your kids are posting on social networking sites and blogs? Are there pictures of themselves? Do they include other family members? Do the pictures show the inside of your home, or members of your family in various states of undress? Perhaps the pictures show you or your child doing something that you wouldn’t want certain people to see, people like your fellow worshipper or maybe the human resources director at the company where you just applied for a job. Some employers have learned how to access profiles we think are private. This stuff, from real skeletons to slightly embarrassing events, is all part of our online footprint, following us well beyond the moment of seemingly minor indiscretions.

What kind of world are we living in? Don’t we care if everyone knows everything about us? Personally, I don’t want the whole world to know what the inside of my home looks like. I don’t want them to know where my daughter’s birthmark is. I don’t want them to see my son shaking his booty in a silly half naked costume while joking round with friends. I even get upset if I mistakenly send a mass email publishing the addresses. I’ve done this a few times and promptly sent an apology to the whole list of people for not typing their address into the BCC line.

It’s just out of control. We can all find things to enjoy about mobile phones and the internet but isn’t it time we each took a personal look at what our use of these technologies says about us. If privacy is not of concern, what about safety? Parents have a responsibility to protect their children and this means possessing a certain degree of control of their actions. Mobile phones seem to help in that you can call you child and check on them when you want to, but so can anyone else. Your kid can lie in bed talking on the phone to some seedy character, unbeknownst to their parents. I don’t even want to think about what my kids are doing through social networking sites but that’s just sticking my head in the sand. It’s really scary when I think about it but think about it I must.

I want to go back and proofread this, check spelling, grammar and review the organization of this rant but the clock is ticking. I think I’ll just post it as is.

One last thing – I invite you topost comments describing good and bad experiences with the technology described above. In addition please feel free to post links to informative websites as well.

Thank you

May some ounce of privacy and a whole lot of security be with you.