Virtual Shadows: Your Privacy in the Information Society

Are millions of Facebook and MySpace users right to share so much personal data online? New technologies are radically changing the way we communicate and interact, but they also hold the potential to undermine our privacy and threaten our security. Vast amounts of personal data on private individuals are being generated from a wide range of sources including social networking sites, government databases and even the humble supermarket loyalty card. As government and commercial organisations begin to share and exploit (and even lose) this information, Karen Lawrence Öqvist discusses the wider implications of these developments. How do we safeguard our privacy and protect our children in this new Information Society, where the rules of engagement have not yet been defined?