Up & Coming Weekly

MARCH 3-9, 2010 UCW 5 WWW.UPANDCOMINGWEEKLY.COM Have you ever "Googled" yourself? No need to 'fess up, of course, but human curiosity being what it is, chances are you have. One of the Dicksons just purchased a new laptop, which occasioned much experimenting with the new toy. In the process, I googled each member of our family and found information on each of us, even those who have not had much time to build professional or career experience. What popped up included wedding parties they had been members of and the like, not much substance, but we are all on the Internet in some way nevertheless. Then, we played around a little more, and found not only home addresses of people we know, but photographs of their homes. These included friends and family members of all ages, in different places around the country. It did not work well, however, for my Austrian relatives, whom we could locate generally but not specifi cally and without photographs of their homes. Apparently, photographs taken by American tax assessors often wind up on the Internet, but this is not necessarily true elsewhere in the world. While I have long been aware that privacy is a compromised reality in this age of instant communication and increasingly global culture, I was still a bit taken aback at how easy it is to get this information. We Dicksons are ordinary computer users as well, which gives me pause to think what someone who is really good at Internet searching could fi nd out about any one of us or all of us. We have all heard stories of Internet predators who stalk children, thieves who steal lifesavings electronically, and other dangers of the Internet. What we may be less aware of, though, are the more ordinary, seemingly less sinister, aspects of what the global net has wrought in what seems like the blink of an eye. Think, for example, about how many times a day all of us are on camera somewhere — the bank, the convenience store checkout line, browsing in the department store — and not even know it. We have all seen grainy but recognizable photos on television as law enforcement offi cials search for a bank robber or a child or senior citizen who is missing, but what we may be less aware of is that the rest of us are on camera as well. All that is needed is an occasion to dig our photos out for public display. Photos we are aware of may be on the Internet as well. Anyone who has ever visited a social networking Web site has seen pictures of family and friends of the person who posted them, and many of those folks probably have no clue their faces and perhaps other identifying information are on worldwide display. My antennae fi rst rose on this issue when one of the younger Dicksons' school required a course on what to post online and what not to post. The intent was to save students from posting inappropriate photos and information that could come back to bite them when they enter the real world of work and professional standards. It was a positive effort and I am glad the school made the effort. Maybe none of this really matters, but then again, maybe it does. If you google the word "privacy," what comes up is page after page of privacy statements for all kinds of companies and institutions, all efforts to assist us in controlling access to our private information. There is also information on the growing body of law dealing with Internet use and misuse and references to learned articles on the issue of Internet privacy, a concept that some experts believe no longer exists. Internet security guru, Steve Rambam, famously said "privacy is dead — get over it and use it." You can watch him say this and more by googling him on — what else —Y ouTube. I would not go quite as far as Mr. Rambam, but there is no question that the privacy enjoyed by my family when I was growing up and did not even realize we had, is not enjoyed by my family today or by yours. Our children and their children may not even understand the concept of privacy as we once knew it. We are way too far down the Internet road to go back, so it seems to me that the lesson here is to be careful. We must learn to use the Internet for our purposes before it — or someone we may never know — uses us. That means learning how to be careful with our personal information including our photographs so that we control their usage and not the other way around, which is exactly what Steve Rambam says clearly and graphically. Most of us have learned how to protect our information over the telephone and now we must learn this. And, yes, Google the noun for an Internet search engine, has indeed morphed into "google," the verb meaning to search online. MARGARET DICKSON, Contributing Writer COMMENTS? 484-6200 ext. 222 or editor@upandcomingweekly.com. TMI (Too Much Information) by MARGARET DICKSON THIS WEEK WITH MARGARET THIS WEEK WITH MARGARET (9 1 0) 829-9 171 www.fascinate-u.com 1 1 6 Green Street in Historic Downtown Fayetteville Admission Prices: Û£[`ad\ÛÝÛ~Û£Y\mdl Remember to register for the March 1 6 Art Class at Fascinate-U! Call 829-9 171 to book your spot now. r

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