Social networking sites have never run out of ideas for new features and services. Employing their own strategies, each one hopes to improve the online experiences of their users. There have been a number of times when some of these sites were affected by issues that were mostly about privacy and safety. The more widely known sites like Facebook, Twitter and Google+1 have not been spared from some controversies. There are no strict limitations as to who can make friends with whom, regardless of age.

There is now a social networking site that is attracting teens and it is gaining popularity. It is called MyYearbook and it was intended for teens, ages 13 and up, who wanted to meet online friends. It was originally created in 2005 by high school students David Cook and his sister Catherine. The two asked the help of their older brother, Geoff to help them with their project. MyYearbook was launched at Montgomery High School, where they were students.

One-third of the present world population uses the internet for different reasons. Some people have discovered that social networking can be an effective tool for individuals, organizations, schools, institutions, businesses, governments, etc. These people use billions of devices that are interconnected via an array of wired and wireless networks. They are using small, hand held devices or bigger devices that are powerful enough to get connected to the whole world. Anyone can see that it is now much easier to communicate with whoever they want to, everywhere they want, all over the world.

For many years, people enjoyed the beneficial effects of internet technology. Today, dishonest individuals use that same technology to carry out their own agendas. The risk of cyber attacks in different forms has increased very rapidly. There is espionage, malware, denial-of-service, cyber war, and terrorism hiding behind the networks. There must be both individual and cooperative efforts among networks in order to address this significant issue.

Researchers in Germany have proposed a new approach to network protection that is becoming more and more significant. By rewarding those organizations that support their own network security, they believe that the risk of cyber attack could be reduced. Their study showed that those organizations that carry out this strategy have greatly reduced the spread of malware and other problems. Most of the online communications that are carried out today using the internet and computers are anonymous. As a result, network systems become ever more vulnerable to cyber attacks and harassment.

The overload of privacy problems that plague the internet is very overwhelming. The efforts put forth to enforce privacy laws become futile as internet technology quickly outdates these legislations. It only takes two years for the evolving technology to render these privacy laws “useless”. Because of this, there needs to be a method that will always match laws with the real-time situation. Privacy promoters have said that self regulation is the best answer to privacy problems.

Self regulation is the self imposition of privacy related programs so as to avoid attacks on privacy. With or without the law, self regulation is the moderation of the use of gathered personal information by companies or groups that collect such data. It is a voluntary action that follows a clear set of rules about how a certain business can safeguard privacy. Self regulation could be done by website advertisers, data brokers, ISPs, social networking sites, apps providers, etc.

The United States has implemented self regulation since 1997. Until now, this initiative has been promoted by way of publishing information and encouraging websites to work towards using it. Currently, not one self regulatory effort that was implemented has sustained success. Some had the chance to begin, but failed in one or more substantial ways. Other efforts only ended up as plans that never really showed what their objective was before they vanished. Self regulation can really help to solve privacy problems if relevant reforms in its implementation are prepared. There is a general thought that consumers themselves should be the ones responsible for safeguarding their own privacy.

Users are generally choosing faster speed as one of their most wanted capabilities in a web browser. There is a host of information waiting to be accessed on the web, and innovations and advancements in web browsing technology are always progressing. Day in and day out, new products are released, promising better online experiences and higher capabilities. Kindle Fire, Amazon’s latest gadget, is to be released on November 15, 2011. According to predictions in the market, this will be the closest competitor of the iPad.

The product is a full-color, 8GB, 7-inch multi-touch tablet with the new web browser called Silk. Among its advantages, this browser can give users faster surfing speed and increased battery life. Along with Silk, Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud, or EC2, will be used to route all web connections from Kindle Fire to the web page. Whenever a user goes online, it is clear that “everything” between the user and the internet passes through Amazon’s EC2.

The aforementioned fact has triggered a new wave of privacy concerns. In a website, one blogger wrote that all of the user’s web surfing habits cannot escape Amazon’s Cloud. He was also apprehensive because users will become open to Amazon, which can track everything that they do online. Amazon did not hide this fact in its Terms and Conditions for using Silk. It expressly declared that with Silk, URLs and certain identifiers will stay in its server for 30 days.

Social networking has already saturated the internet. There are the three giants – Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ – that have become very popular together with their “Like”, “Follow” and “+1” buttons, respectively. Now, there is no problem about pages being liked or followed, because many people do like what they read on the web. The problem is the fact that users can be tracked on every page that contains these sharing buttons, even if an individual does not click any of them. You can then become a target for advertisements, but even worse is that you could lose a lot of privacy.

This unwanted tracking is happening without the user’s knowledge. Information sharing technology has become so advanced that codes can be embedded into every page. This is most common among social networking companies. What they do is integrate codes within the file sharing button on a web page. The code is activated as a user visits the page, unknowingly recording the individual’s “presence” and compiling a profile of his or her preferences. Since this is done continuously, the user becomes a target for advertisements based on the kinds of pages that he or she visits.

A current newspaper editorial about online anonymity has generated a great deal of comments. The editorial declared that in these modern times, anonymity of people should be limited. The writer declared that the online community is laden with too many anonymous comments that are polluting the internet. The article also suggested that newspapers should ban these anonymous comments entirely. The writer states that these have only added to the volume of online trash, which is mostly made up of false accusations and name-calling attacks.

The article was bombarded by criticisms, saying that this kind of argument is both inaccurate and dangerous. For one thing, maintaining online anonymity helps to protect different groups of people. He admitted that anonymity is open to abuse by some, especially those who are spreading malicious comments without limits. This, however, does not warrant that anonymous comments should be banned completely. There are many newspapers that have established policies concerning this issue, while others have entirely banned such “freedom”.

Those who banned it reason that they want to maintain online civility. No one questions this, and any newspaper should always strive for it. Then again, there is more to being identified online than just by a person’s name. Those who are not working against anonymity said that identification poses a great risk. This risk is one that hinders people from speaking out for the fear of retribution. They also pointed out that the past has a lot of stories to tell about unidentified writings that have made great contributions to humanity.

Here is another case of an employee suing his former employer for violation of privacy. A state training manager who was fired for timesheet violations filed a lawsuit against the Labor Department through the New York Civil Liberties Union. The former employee alleged that he was tracked with a GPS device that was secretly placed in his personal car. The NYCLU lawyer described such use of GPS technology as an “unprecedented degree of government intrusion”.

The employee tells a story different from that of his employer as to why he was fired from his post. He said that he was punished because he was the one who stood up for employees who were pressured into attending a prayer breakfast sponsored by a Governor. The Department of Labor claimed that the real cause was his improper filing of timesheets, and not the one he alleged.

What about the GPS tracking device? The device was placed in his car to put him under surveillance so as to keep a record of how he actually did his job. There were allegations that he claimed payment for hours when he was not doing his work. However, the times of surveillance was only supposed to cover his official working hours. What happened was that the monitoring continued during evenings and weekends. There was even a time when the employee’s vacation with his family was monitored.

The European Union has ordered its member states to implement a cookie law. This directive on internet privacy, which required websites to provide user opt-in before they could install cookies on any user’s computer, was approved in November 2009.

After two years of its implementation, the specific requirement for cookie opt-out has yet to be clarified. Those who have implemented this directive are confused themselves over what would really constitute an opt-out requirement. A meeting was held among the group members in an attempt to clarify things. Members say that the user’s decision to visit the website is in itself an indication that he or she agrees with the website’s practices. However, those who are directly involved with the implementation believe that there should be a clear opt-in process.

The main reason why some are not resolved to the idea of the directive is that it will cause a little disruption to users. Nowadays, websites have sponsors that automatically store cookies on a person’s computer. When the directive is implemented, pop-up windows would repeatedly appear on the user’s screen. These windows would be asking for the user’s permission to store cookies. This means that if a website is sponsored by nine companies, there would be nine pop-up windows that would all ask the same question. This would happen every time a user opens a website.

Many internet users do not know that they could be put in jail for faking their personal information on the internet. With this information, Facebook users may have to think many times before providing any false information on their account. This may sound ridiculous, but there have been several cases where users were penalized for violating the “terms of use” of the websites that they visit.

The U.S. Congress is now bent on expanding the scope of laws that pertain to “cybersecurity”. There is already in place the so-called Computer Fraud and Abuse Act passed in 1986. It mainly deals with the laws that pertain to computer hacking. Ever since, its provisions have been periodically broadened, and it now extends far beyond hacking.

At present, the law considers it a criminal act for any user to exceed “authorized access”. This means that users are limited within the terms and conditions stipulated by the website’s owner. Beyond these, the user faces a criminal liability, especially if the violations are committed within a workplace environment.

In the course of their daily work, employees cannot avoid using their company’s IT facilities to send and receive private emails. These are aside from the business-related ones which are considered official. Emails received by employees might stay in their inbox for an indefinite period of time, but being private, it is understood that only the concerned employee is entitled to read them.

The issue with this situation arises when an employer needs to access an employee’s email account during the employee’s prolonged unavailability or absence. Legal implications have been associated with employers opening their employee’s emails. Early this year, the German Higher Labor Court ruled that employers have the right to access and review an employee’s work-related email correspondence. It said that the provisions of the “secrecy of telecommunications” do not apply in this case. The employer cannot be considered a “provider of telecommunication services” although the employee was permitted to use the employer’s email facilities.

One case involved an employee who was absent from work due to a long-term illness. The employer, despite repeated attempts, was unable to obtain the employee’s consent. The employer then opened the employee’s email account, but did not open those emails marked “private”. The employer did this in the presence of two qualified witnesses, and only the employee’s emails that were business-related were read and printed.