Reader's Response Draft 2

In the article “The Perlis of Over-sharing”, Emm (2014) asserts that the precautions should be taken to prevent personal information from leakage. He explains, users might focus too much on the Internet’s convenience and neglect the danger of sharing unnecessary events online. Emm stresses that over-sharing might not only cause personal consequences, but will also threaten the organization they work for. The author also states that users might be in low-guard when using mobile devices as they are not cybercriminals’ preys. In short, users should be cautious when making use of Internet.

The consequences of over-sharing asserted by Emm can be divided into personal and non-personal two catogeries. The personal consequences can be further catogerised into conscious and unconscious. In “what prying eyes can see” and “mass of information that we choose to put”, it is clearly shown that Emm agrees that sharing without filtering and without setting limitation of access, which I would include in conscious over-sharing, causes every single detail in our daily life exposed to the public and it might threaten users’ safety as mentioned “ a criminal knows where you live”.

However, from the example “exposes the minutiae of our daily lives to those who have ability to gather the details” shows that even when we are merely using the social media and never intend to share these information with anyone, the providers are able to get access to them. “App requests permission to read SMS and MMS messages”, it always happens when we have to rely on social media to communicate, shopping online, i-banking or to provide personal details to create an account. Therefore, the providers that offer convenience to us at the same time are able to gather our data. In such case, we are unconsciously over-sharing as we are providing information in order to enjoy the convenience but not to share with others, it is a must to share for the consumers and it is the providers’ obligation to prevent leakage. In such extend, I do not agree with considering this as over-sharing’s consequence as these details are provided when they are promised to be kept confidential. Therefore, it cannot be said that the users are over-sharing as they are merely providing limited information for accessing purpose. However, users are at the same time aware that the fact of sharing personal information with the providers, which contributes to the conscious sharing. Yet, it still cannot be considered over-sharing, as said before, they are only sharing certain details for some purpose. 

For the non-personal over-sharing, as users share the events of the company they working in, although one post does not matter much, but would-be attacker gather all the data from various posts on various social medias and acquire the important content about particular company.

Emm also comments on the use of mobile devices as “a false sense of security when using a mobile device”, he explains, as we sync our data onto online backup system such as iCloud , there is a possibility for others to gain access to our information once they obtained our mobile devices. Emm includes this example in the case of over-sharing, however, syncing onto these systems is meant to be private and safe, even the providers have no authority to access, this scenario is because of losing hardware, a security problem, but not because of sharing over and unnecessarily online, therefore I do not agree with Emm’s assertion as this should not be considered as a consequence of over-sharing.

(581 words)