Dangers of Social Network Sites

Today it isn't difficult to understand that social media can be a threatening element to our privacy and personal lives. For me, I learned this lesson through actual experience rather early, back in 2004. Although the average Internet user in the U.S or Europe may think of Facebook, MySpace or Twitter when first hearing the term social network, the most dominant social network in my home-country is actually a locally-developed one called "Cyworld." Although its popularity is shrinking due to the Western giants headed by Facebook, more than 1/3 of Korea's 50 million population are users of Cyworld, with approximately 9 out of 10 people in their 20s owning accounts. The basic concept of Cyworld is not very different to Facebook - upon registration, you receive your own "Cyworld homepage" where you can upload pictures and posts while receiving comments from your friends. (Viewers of your homepage can also download your photos and re-post them on their homepage.) After completing my 2-year military service back in 2004, I also began to use Cyworld as a tool to "get back into the real world." Then I didn't really have a sense of how dangerous it might be to have personal information provided to the public. During the Athens Summer Olympics of 2004, a popular judo player of the same name as mine (Wonhee Lee) won Korea's first gold medal in Athens for the 66-73 kg division of Judo. Right after the winning match, people started logging on Cyworld to locate his personal homepage. Some were there to post congratulatory messages and some were there just to simply check out his personal life. Here more than 4,000 people random Cyworld users mistakenly swarmed over to my homepage and started downloading photographs of my family, my house, and my friends. I received more than 400 "friend" requests in just one day, and strangers started arguments on my homepage to confirm whether I was the right Wonhee Lee they were looking for. I called Cyworld corporate to complain, but did not receive a clear answer on how I was to cope with the situation. All I was told was that I should make sure to set my privacy settings from now on so that strangers couldn't view my personal information. Back then, the whole process seemed like a big hassle to me. Now that I look back, I realize how ignorant I had been. Although the whole culture of social media and the privacy issues that follow have developed to a stage where the users are now capable of controlling what goes onto the public and what not, I still believe that there are related issues that need to be dealt with on a company level. Social media is a tool that both the company and its users need to collaborate on in order to promote healthy growth. Although we are still going through many issues related to personal information and privacy issues, I'm just glad for the moment that the users of social media services are certain that their voices are heard.