Privacy on the Internet

For this school year, I have decided to focus on the topic of privacy on the internet as it relates to our government. From 2009 to 2010, the number of young people (ages 13-17) on facebook grew 88.2% as seen on this chart. With more and more people on social networking sites like facebook, it is becoming increasingly easier to access the personal information of others online. Not everyone who uses these sites uses it in the way it was intended. With personal information available to anyone who wants to access it, abuse on the internet is becoming increasingly frequent and with no formal laws on the internet, it is extremely hard to stop the harassment and theft of personal data. As seen here, there are multiple aspects of invasion of privacy on the internet that are not being stopped. This is an issue for not just young people as older generations are also on the social networking sites. I found on these graphs that 25% of users on social networking sites where private information is available are 35-44 years old. This age group has more to lose by the theft of their personal data.