Privacy Issues Caused by New Technology
Blogs and new internet technology have caused increasing privacy problems in today’s society. Inappropriate blog use has been occurring. According to FORTUNE Magazine, over three dozen of the FORTUNE 500 companies for better or worse. At first, only technology way into business blogging, but now several have jumped on the bandwagon. In addition, creating fake facebook profiles, known as now produce blogs, companies led the other corporations corporations are meat puppets. Sock
puppets, or false online personas, also exist. Ruckus Network Inc. used a meat puppet “Brody Ruckus” to obtain the email addresses of 300,000 facebook users. As another example, in the article “Corporate blogging: Wal-Mart’s fumbles”, a discussion of Wal-Mart’s faulty blog use occurs. Recently, a blog praising Wal-Mart, “ostensibly created by a man and a woman traveling the country in an RV and staying in Wal-Mart parking lots, turned out to be underwritten by Working Families for Wal-Mart, a company-sponsored group organized by the Edelman public
relations firm.”
Fake Blog Scandals are becoming more and more popular. An article, “Sony Confesses to Creating ‘Flog,’ Shutters Comments” discusses a recent fake blog scandal. Author, Shankar Gupta writes, “This one- the latest in a string of stealth marketing efforts- involves a “flog,” or fake blog, created by viral marketing firm Zipatoni to promote the Sony PSP.” Using a blog as a marketing tool may be seen as unethical from some perspectives. Another ethical dilemma is invasion of privacy. AOL released search log data on subscribers that had been intended for use with the company’s newly launched research site. According to the article, “AOL apologizes for release of user search data” by Elinor Mills and Dawn Kawamoto, 658,000 subscribers could readily be indentified based on the searches each individual conducted. Recent advances in technology have created a surplus of blogs, flogs, meat-puppets, and other ways corporations can cheat and attract more consumers. It is a big problem in today’s society that corporations advertising false or misleading information.