Privacy

When dealing with new media, the issues of privacy and confidentiality often arise. Individuals want to trust that their personal information will not be leaked to outside sources when new media is utilized, but this unfortunately does happen. One tragic example of this occurrence involved the University of Maryland. Over 300,000 students had their social security numbers, date of births, and university identification numbers leaked to an outside source during a security breach. This was accessed through the school's computer system. Although we hope for these type of incidents not to happen, it is natural in the new media world. Whenever or wherever an individual inputs personal information, there is always a chance of an unethical worker, or even a hacker accessing this information. A platform as simple as Facebook and Instagram can be targeted, holding names, date of births, and even credit card information, due to the fact that people can now shop through the Instagram app.

Another instance where privacy and confidentiality have been compromised were with Target. In this case however, over 110 million people had their credit card information leaked to an outside source. As we can see, it seems very normal (being a large chain store that many Americans go to), but it is definitely not something we want to deal with. That is why Target began using chip enabled smart cards to make hacking much harder. They also started using tougher security on their system so that it would take a great deal of effort to actually access credit card information of customers. No matter which company you deal with, no matter how well known it may seem, the compromise of privacy and confidentiality is always possible. It is just up to the company to not leave open doors for hackers, and to try just as hard protecting their customers, as they do serving them.