Privacy: Taking Advantage of Personal Information

In the On The Media clip “Permanent Record” Nazanin Rafsanjani discusses how she wrote an embarrassing letter to www.iranian.com when was just 19 years old in response to 9/11 and the letter is now featured on the website. Nazanin Rafsanjani discusses how she has asked them personally to remove the letter from the website, but according to them “everything on Iranian.com is permanent”. This is scary to me because something that is clearly Nazanin Rafsanjani’s words, her beliefs, etc. has been taken as property of Iranian.com and publicized without her consent.

Even though this situation is different than online networking sites, like Facebook and MySpace, it reminded me of the recent Facebook controversy. Facebook recently changed their Terms of Use, allowing them (Facebook) to use any information that any user has ever put on Facebook, in any way they wish to, without the permission of the individual. They also reserved the right to change this term at any time. Even though I am not sure if Facebook has modified this since I last checked, I still find this to be very scary and invasive. I understand, on the one hand, that if one agrees to use Facebook and abide by Facebook’s terms, then they have agreed on a deal. Facebook offers a service (communication, networking, picture sharing, etc.) but it is at a cost, a high cost: one’s privacy. It just seems a little deceitful and hypocritical to me that Facebook allows users the ability to set these elaborate security settings, which really just create a false sense of security, since at the same time Facebook reserves the right to use anything you have ever put on Facebook in any way they want to, at any time.