Open Spaces and Obliterated Privacy

U.P. CM Ms. Mayawati is the latest victim. The case is: someone created her fake profile on Orkut and loaded it with objectionable personal information. By the time state home ministry could gather its arms and ammunition to nail the culprit, the profile disappeared. Smart move! It happens to everyone, to all of us, but since she is a high profile victim, she deserves a place in newspapers. Any social networking site, be it Orkut, My Space, Names database, Groups or Blogspots poses danger to our privacy. Loading profile means risking our privacy. Girls are the favorite targets. Don’t believe me? Just load a profile in the name of a lady and see the magic. During my college days boys in my class used to have two email IDs. A professional one and another by the name of a girl this because they found that people are not interested in chatting with them as males. Things haven’t changed at all. Males go head over heels to befriend a lady in any open space. Ever since we have entered in this open, global world we are at risk of being watched, spied, and interfered by unwanted persons. I have come across several suspicious persons as I mentioned. Here are some who don’t post or read anything, they just wander, spy others and pass comments. Be it a lady or a gentleman, one is sure going to be irked by nonsense scraps. But people don’t care, infact this is a mode of entertainment for them, they think themselves very smart and intelligent. Seasoned users are smart enough to load fake profiles and cautious about hiding their identity, but threat still remains. We think we are fooling others by a fake profile who knows we might be fooled by the next person in the same way? Personal information loaded on an open space is there for everyone to see and anyone can copy it. We never got to know whom we are communicating with: genuine or imposter? Our email ids are open. Though every site promises not to reveal personal information but I can’t believe it or else how come there are half a dozen faltoo mails in inbox every day?

I came across a real incident last week, my friend was furious, snapping at her ex-fiance in every possible manner. I was surprised at this behavior as she used to praise her ex 15 times a day even after their engagement broke down due to family conflicts. Now suddenly this change in attitude! Later in the evening I came to know that she visited her ex’s profile on a social networking site and saw the “married” marital status. What was eating her from inside was, I suppose that he settled before her. Though she says she has nothing to do with him, she still visits his profile occasionally. Call it anything, concern, regard or “just like that” but I’ll call it spying. Its not that others are disturbing us; from this incident I think we are interfering in other’s life and creating troubles for ourselves. We are losing our peace of mind for no reason at all.

Take cell phones, despite being the convenience they offer they are a headache. Everyone owns a cell phone but very few people know the etiquettes of keeping it. Some don’t even take care of time; ringing whenever it comes to mind, some use it like a toy: sending missed calls one after another. Imagine your cell phone ringing when you are on something important, and you know the person has nothing serious. Some send missed calls to tell they are remembering us and
expect to call back, I feel like kicking such persons. Even grown ups behave like teenagers, sending SMS after SMS as if it’s a substitute for conversation. Personally I kicked several so called friends of mine for such an immature behavior.

Its not that I have some special distaste for these things, mobiles, internet have become an essential part of life; what worries me is this invasion of our personal zone. All the etiquettes are on backseat. We intrude in other person’s life and the next person in ours. We are living on a round planet! Everything that joins us with the world invades our privacy. This is the price we are paying in a global world for a global cause.