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Privacy: Is There Any Left?

Maggie Chafins

Sinclair Community College

HUM 1130 Humanities And Technology

Professor Sam Morren
June 28, 2018
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Privacy is a very tricky, almost undefinable concept that has taken a place in the spotlight

over the last several years. Merriam Webster defines privacy as, “a : the quality or state of being

apart from company or observation and b : freedom from unauthorized intrusion.” In general,

everyday conversation, it seems that most people want to keep their privacy. However, it is

those same people that are seen again and again on social media posting quite intimate details

about their life, their families and their political views. Personally, I try to post only general

pictures on social media. I don’t make many comments, I don’t share personal information and I

don’t even have a Facebook account. Perhaps that is due to the fact that my family constantly

discusses safe tactics for living, to include limiting your personal information over the internet.

However, even without this input from my family, I believe that I would still lead a life absent of

the Facebook craze. I’m just not that interested in displaying my life for all to see. I have seen

how it can affect relationships, employment and education. I have seen co-workers get fired for

calling off sick, only to be caught out partying via an Instagram post. I have watched friendships

fall apart because one friend said something to another friend, who then posted it so that a third

friend saw and became offended. I believe that your whole life can, in fact, be affected by the

social media persona that you create.

Employers have increasingly been looking into possible employees’ social media

accounts to make sure that the person will properly represent their company. One only has to

search Google to find a plethora of stories about employees who were fired for posting

inappropriate things about their job, or, even worse, while at their job. Someone acting in a

future employer capacity would probably not appreciate these kinds of posts and may not hire a

candidate solely on that basis. Yet another reason to really think about what one is posting.
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“We have come to the end of privacy; our private lives, as our grandparents would have

recognized them, have been winnowed away to the realm of the shameful and secret” (Preston

65). Must we really accept the fact that we no longer have any privacy? It used to be that the

paparazzi were viewed as these horrible people who invaded the lives of the rich and famous.

Eventually, the attitude became that since they chose to become famous, they chose to waive

their right to a private life. That didn’t affect the rest of us. Now, however, it seems that if we

choose to use social media, for instance, that we, too, are choosing to waive our right to privacy.

What we may not realize in making that choice is that our information doesn’t actually get erased

when we hit the delete button. Particularly people of my generation tend to post information that

they quickly regret. It is unfortunate that information will now be somewhere in cyberspace until

the end of time and may come back to haunt them.

According to the seven veils of privacy, the level of phenomenology, level 3, people may

not even pay attention to a situation where their privacy is, in fact, being compromised (O’Hara

76). Because they don’t feel like it is a situation where whatever they say is now permanent

record, then they don’t realize that their privacy is being compromised. That leads to level 4,

preferences, where someone may realize that their privacy is at risk, but in that particular

situation, they don’t really mind (O’Hara 77). After all, shopping on Amazon, one may not mind

that their shopping list will become more and more personalized based on their previous

searches. It may make shopping easier for them in the future.

In the end, it seems that we are in a place where we would like to pick and choose the

level of privacy that we are afforded, but entities around us are already collecting our data. As

we continue to travel the path of accepting our fate of being an open book to the world, we also

need to make sure that we educate ourselves on the consequences. What we say and post online
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will be around forever, and we need to seriously think about that every time we post a personal

piece of information or a less than modest picture. It will affect our friendships, our marriages,

our families, our employment and our future generations to come.

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Works Cited

O’Hara, Kieron. “The Seven Veils of Privacy”. Humanity and the Challenge of Technology.

McGraw-Hill 2017. 75-79. Print.

Preston, Alex. “The Death of Privacy”. Humanity and the Challenge of Technology. McGraw-

Hill 2017. 65-70. Print.