Privacy in the virtual era we now live in .......

There is smthing i find new and strange on Face Book now ....today my elder child showed me how the new Face Book search works ..... he has it on his account ....and it is amazing how many options of search this new system gives the users ........... I wonder if people who are on Face Book will be able to really block out being searched ...... with any more innovation to this system.

Face Book needs this new system as a means of revenue generation I suppose. It does make me think ......as to how long can we take our privacy for granted? It reminds me of a time long long ago when i was reading the book 'We the living' by Ayn Rand. I liked  this book more than all the other books written by this philosophical author. While i was reading the book i was struck, by how cruel the system in communist Russia was......people had no secrets ...even children unknowingly let out information about the happenings or dialogues taking place in their house, leading to problems for their parents!!!! Now in hindsight i think i was so naive .....there are no secrets in today's world ....computers are hacked .....mail ids are hacked ....files are leaked...people live in more confined spaces and conversations are overheard by neighbours. 

Information is shared by some because they feel knowledge is free and should be shared, whereas this very act of knowledge sharing is a crime for some. This is because it means loss of revenue from selling this information. Some think hacking is ethical in certain contexts. Many news agencies are sued over issues such as personal snaps of celebrities being leaked and printed for public viewing. Recently information about the royals being unknowingly disclosed, even resulted in a death. This was by far the saddest case of life being snuffed out in the name of a prank, but a prank gone so very wrong. Some times it makes me wonder, whether, in following some ones life, even if it is someone you admire, classify this act as a form of  voyeurism?....scary thought as nobody wants to be labeled so drastically. We need to look at the whole scenario in a retrospective manner to understand where and how we the common man and media go wrong .......

In the end i would also like to add the net or FB or any other public platform is not for the chicken hearts ..... if you want to network and look or do some research on anyone the net is a convenient place. If you use it to research and look at friends and enemies too in some cases be ready to get looked at ....if you feel paranoid about people looking at you then go off the platform people ....... :)