Privacy & Confidentiality

Privacy and confidentiality has been a hot topic in reference to the Internet ever since it's formation in the 1970's. Although security and encryption has significantly improved since those early days, some user's are still reluctant to share their personal information, let alone sensitive credit card information, over the web. Although there are many examples of social networking sites, for example, being used for malicious purposes, I believe that overall internet security is pretty stable. In my opinion, the few unfortunate instances of a breach of such e-security tends to be the exception rather than the rule. Extensive measures have been taken to ensure user confidentiality and I believe that their success in doing so is demonstrated in the sheer popularity of e-commerce and buyer confidence. Earlier this month Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg spoke publicly about the advances in user privacy on his site and assured them of a safe, confident Facebook experience. I think that Facebook, especially recently, has stepped up their security with providing the user with an extensive list of options for who you would like your sensitive information to be exposed to. Additionally, users have the option to make their blogs or wiki's set to "private" to limit the amount of information exposed to people you don't know.