Many of us including this content generator get so excited knowing that anyone with the right tools, hardward and software can have access to the social networking platforms, post information and share this with others as well as access other people's work.
Web users including this author together with the participants who attended the Web 2.0 for development training course from Monday 27th to Friday 31st January 2014 held at the University of Namibia in Windhoek and sponsored by the Technical Centre of Agriculture and Rural Cooperation (ACP-EU) are even more enthusiastic to make use of the internet as we were exposed to the usage of the advanced tools to that changed our whole internet experience.
But as much as most users, individuals or communities of practice, groups or organizations are grabbing the opportunities granted by the World Wide Web social communication tricks, the question of privacy, security and intellectual property rights and even access to social media is begging for answers.
It is true that before a person signs up for a particular website, the service provider in most cases asks the user to fill in a user service agreement with conditions on how the user will make use of the opportunity granted by the particular webiste adminsitrator. And the issues of privacy and security are contained in such agreements - although the reliability in taking the word of the particular administrator is another question. But how many of us do make time to carefully read through such such user agreements? From my own experience, I was also one of those who would at times just check or click in the space that asked me if I agreed to the conditions without necessarily having carefully scrutinized the information. But, this behaviour has now changed after I attended the Web 2.0 training course, thanks to our Trainer Simunza Muyangana who made some of these issues clear to us.
This post aims to help many web users who like me, (previously) still need to be reminded about the challenges that came along the free access to the internet web sites and related platforms.
Privacy
Wikepedia defines privacy as the ability of an individual or groups tokeep their lives and personal affairs out of public view or to control the flow of information about themselves".
But, how practical is that, especially in this time of fast and speedy internet usage and of web users who seem to be so keen of sharing almost everything - a tendency I refer to "web-usage-excitement/mania". Many a times, depening on the mood we are in (and this is across the board and does not target a particular web usage group .eg. Generation Next, as adults or as I call them "Generation-Who or After/Old" also do the same (at least from my experience).
According to the IMAR Information Management Resource Kit on the privacy related lessons, organizations and stakeholders in your project have the right to privacy. You therefore have to define the information that is classified as private and ensure that such content is secured.
Thefore, as a web user in your individual or professional capacity, you have to clearly know as to what type of data you would like to post on the internet websites, who will be the target audience that will have access to such information, how acceptable will it be for them to receive such information and is the information applicable. You have to think about the fact that the information you post will be permanent records on the related platforms on the web and ask yourself as to who will manage such information and what will that person do with that critical information as he or she will control that content.
IMARK Information Management Resource Kit hints that most commercial social media sites base their business models on advertising revenue. This means they share aggregate data about their users with companies and advertisers, allowing them direct advertising messages to groups of potential consumers.
As a Sales Executive at my work place, I can immediately confirm that audience data levels in terms of popularly are the once that sell - including their demographics as these help adverisers to chose their potential target consumers of their products. For instance, for an advertiser to place his/her commercial in a particular programme on TV or Radio, such as show must have the needed audience level data and show popularity to warrant it to be the best choice for a particular customer. Coupled to that, the service provider will then be able to further inform the client that - a particualr show is mainly watched or listened to by this specific age group - in a specific region or country etc and therefore is appropriate for your particular product. This particular blog page has according to its page view statistics that it is being watched in Africa, Europe and America already - and could be a good platform to sell particular advertisers goods depending on their target markets. That's how personal information or data we post on this platform is important - and is likely to remain permanent as the administrators of the information will use it and re-use it for different purposes.
Potential dangers of having private information on the web
Some of the challenges involved in having your information on the web include, identity theft, fraud and copying of valuable informatino from your profile or any other platform.
Privacy best practices
Each web users must strictly remember to manage the business staff, funders, clients' personal information carefully. He or she must always watch out when working on sensitive issues such as human rights abuse cases or corruption. Medical records and related information must be avoided and never be posted on the internet. This also applies to financial accounts, banking and credit card related information. Keep these to yourself.
This is however reminding me of our Web 2.0 for development Facilitator, Simunza Muyanga who told participants that if you do not want any information to be known or want to keep them secret, do not record, shared, distribute or talk about that, otherwise, there is risk of it being out there. You must therefore learn to follow privacy best pracitses and learn about user agreement - its content and how the service will be managed and most importantly how it relates to your private information.
User agreement
User agreement is a document that states the terms and conditions underwhich the company or service provider is willing to interact with you. This is more critical to host services owned by others rather than creating your own site.Such an agreement asks the user to check a sign up box if he or she agrees to the set terms and conditions.
Individual privacy
Each individual has the right to privacy, by keeping the information secret and protected fromn others, not be accessed, indexed or used as well as redistributed via e-mail/content through forwarding and recording.
But, this is how such information can end up being compromised:
The IMARK Information Management Resource Kit confirms that internent companies have the capacity to monitor individuals users, follow interaction between users and profiles, scan, index the content of files, emails and messages. They can monitor internet traffic circulation on their private network. Individuals can also have accss to your company by installing or making you instal surveillance software.
Good practices to avoid your private information compromised
IMARK Information Management Resource Kit on this particular subject advises web users to delete all unnecessary personal information , think about files they share and keep on remote services. It informs users to bear in mind that there are alternatives to surfing the web "anonymously", take into account that they can encrypt files and emails and make sure they really delete files by only placing them in the recycle bin, but that they also delete them from there.
Intellectual Property Rights
Intellectual Property refers to the legal rights associated with inventions, artistic expressions and other products of imagination such literacy work, music and papers to mention but some of them. Each country has its own laws and reguations on Intellectual Property Rights as well as International Treatis on this subject.
Internet Expansions and its free usage has therefore brought about interesting debate on Intellectual Property Challenges and how it worked traditionally. The debate include the argument that Intellectual Property concepts should be maintained and protected (by Technology and by law). The other argument states that Intellectual Property Rights should change and evolve to reflect the possibilities of interests in technology.
Authors have the rights over their Intellectual Products even if the material is available on the internet. This is because Copyright law protects most materials from bing copied or used without permission or payment. Auhors have the right to decide how the material will be used and distributed.
Some interesting IP licences categories that a web user can consider while the debate on Intellectual Property verus Intellect IP revolution challenges is to be sorted.
Public Domain
This license is less restrictive and hinges more on defusing of common terms and conditions. No one owns or controls the particular right of the products.
Creative Common License
This rights gives the user fewer restrictions compared to the traditional copyright. These include attribution, non commercial, no derivatize works and share alike. Creative Common License is one way to allow your organization's knowledge to create a wider, global public good. My work place can for instance put information on its website to promote its image and the core business of the corporation, as long as such information is not abused by restricting users from for instance using that for commercial purposes. The users must also be able to attribute such information the corporate website or the creation of such content.
Free/Open/Libre Source Software
The Free or Open or Libre Source Software of FLOSS as it is referred to enables the users to run the programme for any purpose.They can study and mofify the programmes, redistribute copies of either in the original or modified programmes e.g. financial management, audio editing, text processor and many other functions to mention but a few.
IMARK Information Managemnt Resource Kit on this topic says that softwar developers and users find many advantages in FLOSS as it can be configurd, translated and modified for specific uses.Communities of developers do contribute to th quality of the programme and provide constant feedbadk and improvement to the programmes. This idea is great for my organization as most of the time, aggregators or intermediaries are brought in to share their software at a cost. But, if some of the employees were empowered to be developers especially for the content production and revenue generation softwares, my corporation could add more value to its processes.But, capacity building is critical and that is why I would share the knowledge I learnt with the colleagues as part of the capacity building efforts even if the course did not focus on software developing (hopefuly, I could acquire knowledge in that respect too).
Reliabiliy of content on the internet
Most of the time, internet is our first source of information for our research and study purposes. We run to the various search engines to take us to various websites with relevant information we are looking for. Bu the question posed in the heading of this post, is, how reliable is this information that is so freely available?
IMARK Information Managemnt Resource Kit plus my Web 2.0 Trainer Simunza Muyangana highlighted the fact that the good thing about internet information is the fact that there are no intermediaries or third parties involved in making the content accessible. A user has direct access to the source, or the interested people who are ready to help or share their information and passionate web users. In other words, for the users to access information, it is usually from a particular source - who is directly providing such information. For example, this content I am providing on this page is from me - and the user can get the information directly from my page and they can reach me through my page by commenting or requesting particualar information. There is no third person who will have to again interpret what I wrote as I am reachable for accurate information as a source.
However, it is still very important for any user to always evaluate the information by establithing the validity of such content, the authoriship, timeliness and integrity. That's why I had earlier indicated that the web user can still contact the author via the comment space should he or she wants to verify particualr information.
The user will therefore verify the publisher, reference and background, context, currency of the post or content, the tone in which the message is put accross, point of view and multiple sources if any.
Access to Social Media
The last part of this post deals with access to social media. Many of us including this author are happy and continue to spread the message to our colleagues and friends to make use of the opportunities brought along by the internet. But, how many of the people in our surroundings or countries have access to appropriate hardware and media devices as well as broad band?
Hardwares that are being referred to include computers with advanced processing power, high resolution digital photo cameras, digital video cameras, web cams and smart phones. From many of our experiences, most of the time, our internet at our offices is not working or it is slow or completely off and we get messages from IT apologizing for that and that they were busy rectifying the situation? This situation of broad-band challenges - (broadband which refers to reliable high speed internet access) is so common at many work places especially in the public sector..
At home, because of illeteratercy and no knowing what to do, our laptops are slow, and now and then indicate faults that must be fixed while of them crash with our information - because amongst others we have no means to take them to those who are knowledgeable due to limited resources as there is no free lunch and we get shocked by the fact that for the software that can be found on the internet to do the cleaning for you and speed up the process, one has to purchase it.\These are all challenges facing the web users and not to mention potential users. Some villagers, towns and even schools are yet to have electricity not to mention about internet network although our rural electrification is progressing well in some countries.
The good thing however is, as time goes, internet passionate users and daily thinking about how to improve the situation for every user - in terms of its accesss, information protection and content reliability - you too can think about the best ways how to improve the situation and share that with fellow internet users on any of the available plaftforms such as facebook - because information and knowlege is so powerful and can make a difference in our lives.
I am sure, now you know what to immediately think about as soon as you want to post any information, image or audio on the web - your privacy, security, IP and reliability - as well as the need to have all of us have access to this wondersful linkages world.
Compiled by Menesia Muinjo.
Web users including this author together with the participants who attended the Web 2.0 for development training course from Monday 27th to Friday 31st January 2014 held at the University of Namibia in Windhoek and sponsored by the Technical Centre of Agriculture and Rural Cooperation (ACP-EU) are even more enthusiastic to make use of the internet as we were exposed to the usage of the advanced tools to that changed our whole internet experience.
But as much as most users, individuals or communities of practice, groups or organizations are grabbing the opportunities granted by the World Wide Web social communication tricks, the question of privacy, security and intellectual property rights and even access to social media is begging for answers.
It is true that before a person signs up for a particular website, the service provider in most cases asks the user to fill in a user service agreement with conditions on how the user will make use of the opportunity granted by the particular webiste adminsitrator. And the issues of privacy and security are contained in such agreements - although the reliability in taking the word of the particular administrator is another question. But how many of us do make time to carefully read through such such user agreements? From my own experience, I was also one of those who would at times just check or click in the space that asked me if I agreed to the conditions without necessarily having carefully scrutinized the information. But, this behaviour has now changed after I attended the Web 2.0 training course, thanks to our Trainer Simunza Muyangana who made some of these issues clear to us.
This post aims to help many web users who like me, (previously) still need to be reminded about the challenges that came along the free access to the internet web sites and related platforms.
Privacy
Wikepedia defines privacy as the ability of an individual or groups tokeep their lives and personal affairs out of public view or to control the flow of information about themselves".
But, how practical is that, especially in this time of fast and speedy internet usage and of web users who seem to be so keen of sharing almost everything - a tendency I refer to "web-usage-excitement/mania". Many a times, depening on the mood we are in (and this is across the board and does not target a particular web usage group .eg. Generation Next, as adults or as I call them "Generation-Who or After/Old" also do the same (at least from my experience).
According to the IMAR Information Management Resource Kit on the privacy related lessons, organizations and stakeholders in your project have the right to privacy. You therefore have to define the information that is classified as private and ensure that such content is secured.
Thefore, as a web user in your individual or professional capacity, you have to clearly know as to what type of data you would like to post on the internet websites, who will be the target audience that will have access to such information, how acceptable will it be for them to receive such information and is the information applicable. You have to think about the fact that the information you post will be permanent records on the related platforms on the web and ask yourself as to who will manage such information and what will that person do with that critical information as he or she will control that content.
IMARK Information Management Resource Kit hints that most commercial social media sites base their business models on advertising revenue. This means they share aggregate data about their users with companies and advertisers, allowing them direct advertising messages to groups of potential consumers.
As a Sales Executive at my work place, I can immediately confirm that audience data levels in terms of popularly are the once that sell - including their demographics as these help adverisers to chose their potential target consumers of their products. For instance, for an advertiser to place his/her commercial in a particular programme on TV or Radio, such as show must have the needed audience level data and show popularity to warrant it to be the best choice for a particular customer. Coupled to that, the service provider will then be able to further inform the client that - a particualr show is mainly watched or listened to by this specific age group - in a specific region or country etc and therefore is appropriate for your particular product. This particular blog page has according to its page view statistics that it is being watched in Africa, Europe and America already - and could be a good platform to sell particular advertisers goods depending on their target markets. That's how personal information or data we post on this platform is important - and is likely to remain permanent as the administrators of the information will use it and re-use it for different purposes.
Potential dangers of having private information on the web
Some of the challenges involved in having your information on the web include, identity theft, fraud and copying of valuable informatino from your profile or any other platform.
Privacy best practices
Each web users must strictly remember to manage the business staff, funders, clients' personal information carefully. He or she must always watch out when working on sensitive issues such as human rights abuse cases or corruption. Medical records and related information must be avoided and never be posted on the internet. This also applies to financial accounts, banking and credit card related information. Keep these to yourself.
This is however reminding me of our Web 2.0 for development Facilitator, Simunza Muyanga who told participants that if you do not want any information to be known or want to keep them secret, do not record, shared, distribute or talk about that, otherwise, there is risk of it being out there. You must therefore learn to follow privacy best pracitses and learn about user agreement - its content and how the service will be managed and most importantly how it relates to your private information.
User agreement
User agreement is a document that states the terms and conditions underwhich the company or service provider is willing to interact with you. This is more critical to host services owned by others rather than creating your own site.Such an agreement asks the user to check a sign up box if he or she agrees to the set terms and conditions.
Individual privacy
Each individual has the right to privacy, by keeping the information secret and protected fromn others, not be accessed, indexed or used as well as redistributed via e-mail/content through forwarding and recording.
But, this is how such information can end up being compromised:
The IMARK Information Management Resource Kit confirms that internent companies have the capacity to monitor individuals users, follow interaction between users and profiles, scan, index the content of files, emails and messages. They can monitor internet traffic circulation on their private network. Individuals can also have accss to your company by installing or making you instal surveillance software.
Good practices to avoid your private information compromised
IMARK Information Management Resource Kit on this particular subject advises web users to delete all unnecessary personal information , think about files they share and keep on remote services. It informs users to bear in mind that there are alternatives to surfing the web "anonymously", take into account that they can encrypt files and emails and make sure they really delete files by only placing them in the recycle bin, but that they also delete them from there.
Intellectual Property Rights
Intellectual Property refers to the legal rights associated with inventions, artistic expressions and other products of imagination such literacy work, music and papers to mention but some of them. Each country has its own laws and reguations on Intellectual Property Rights as well as International Treatis on this subject.
Internet Expansions and its free usage has therefore brought about interesting debate on Intellectual Property Challenges and how it worked traditionally. The debate include the argument that Intellectual Property concepts should be maintained and protected (by Technology and by law). The other argument states that Intellectual Property Rights should change and evolve to reflect the possibilities of interests in technology.
Authors have the rights over their Intellectual Products even if the material is available on the internet. This is because Copyright law protects most materials from bing copied or used without permission or payment. Auhors have the right to decide how the material will be used and distributed.
Some interesting IP licences categories that a web user can consider while the debate on Intellectual Property verus Intellect IP revolution challenges is to be sorted.
Public Domain
This license is less restrictive and hinges more on defusing of common terms and conditions. No one owns or controls the particular right of the products.
Creative Common License
This rights gives the user fewer restrictions compared to the traditional copyright. These include attribution, non commercial, no derivatize works and share alike. Creative Common License is one way to allow your organization's knowledge to create a wider, global public good. My work place can for instance put information on its website to promote its image and the core business of the corporation, as long as such information is not abused by restricting users from for instance using that for commercial purposes. The users must also be able to attribute such information the corporate website or the creation of such content.
Free/Open/Libre Source Software
The Free or Open or Libre Source Software of FLOSS as it is referred to enables the users to run the programme for any purpose.They can study and mofify the programmes, redistribute copies of either in the original or modified programmes e.g. financial management, audio editing, text processor and many other functions to mention but a few.
IMARK Information Managemnt Resource Kit on this topic says that softwar developers and users find many advantages in FLOSS as it can be configurd, translated and modified for specific uses.Communities of developers do contribute to th quality of the programme and provide constant feedbadk and improvement to the programmes. This idea is great for my organization as most of the time, aggregators or intermediaries are brought in to share their software at a cost. But, if some of the employees were empowered to be developers especially for the content production and revenue generation softwares, my corporation could add more value to its processes.But, capacity building is critical and that is why I would share the knowledge I learnt with the colleagues as part of the capacity building efforts even if the course did not focus on software developing (hopefuly, I could acquire knowledge in that respect too).
Reliabiliy of content on the internet
Most of the time, internet is our first source of information for our research and study purposes. We run to the various search engines to take us to various websites with relevant information we are looking for. Bu the question posed in the heading of this post, is, how reliable is this information that is so freely available?
IMARK Information Managemnt Resource Kit plus my Web 2.0 Trainer Simunza Muyangana highlighted the fact that the good thing about internet information is the fact that there are no intermediaries or third parties involved in making the content accessible. A user has direct access to the source, or the interested people who are ready to help or share their information and passionate web users. In other words, for the users to access information, it is usually from a particular source - who is directly providing such information. For example, this content I am providing on this page is from me - and the user can get the information directly from my page and they can reach me through my page by commenting or requesting particualar information. There is no third person who will have to again interpret what I wrote as I am reachable for accurate information as a source.
However, it is still very important for any user to always evaluate the information by establithing the validity of such content, the authoriship, timeliness and integrity. That's why I had earlier indicated that the web user can still contact the author via the comment space should he or she wants to verify particualr information.
The user will therefore verify the publisher, reference and background, context, currency of the post or content, the tone in which the message is put accross, point of view and multiple sources if any.
Access to Social Media
The last part of this post deals with access to social media. Many of us including this author are happy and continue to spread the message to our colleagues and friends to make use of the opportunities brought along by the internet. But, how many of the people in our surroundings or countries have access to appropriate hardware and media devices as well as broad band?
Hardwares that are being referred to include computers with advanced processing power, high resolution digital photo cameras, digital video cameras, web cams and smart phones. From many of our experiences, most of the time, our internet at our offices is not working or it is slow or completely off and we get messages from IT apologizing for that and that they were busy rectifying the situation? This situation of broad-band challenges - (broadband which refers to reliable high speed internet access) is so common at many work places especially in the public sector..
The good thing however is, as time goes, internet passionate users and daily thinking about how to improve the situation for every user - in terms of its accesss, information protection and content reliability - you too can think about the best ways how to improve the situation and share that with fellow internet users on any of the available plaftforms such as facebook - because information and knowlege is so powerful and can make a difference in our lives.
I am sure, now you know what to immediately think about as soon as you want to post any information, image or audio on the web - your privacy, security, IP and reliability - as well as the need to have all of us have access to this wondersful linkages world.
Compiled by Menesia Muinjo.
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