Torn about Privacy

I am most definitely torn about Privacy when it comes to social media. When I began thinking about the core value that I thought best, Privacy stood out without any doubt in my mind. Like most people, I have been bombarded by unwanted emails, particularly of the commercial nature, that I am still wondering how I ended up being part of, where did I happen to put my name without being aware it would be captured somehow, whom did I give my email to...to this day, even after life has given me some training to deal with unwanted emails, I find it slightly annoying (and funny at the same time) when stores try to capture your email address in order to send out their ads. I was at Old Navy recently and was asked, in a very matter-of-fact kind of way: "shall we start with your email address" at the register. An untrained and unprepared customer would have easily given such information to the store rep. These days, I am prepared to say: "no, thank you", end of topic ;)

Yet, as other folks have already mentioned in this blog, it is an open medium, and whether I like it or not, privacy is taking its own shape. I can only assume that as we get more and more involved in this medium, the definition of privacy will change and so will our threshold of comfort as to what we would like others to know about us.

At the same time, it might be a cultural thing (and take into account that we live in a multi-cultural world), but I am not particularly bothered by others knowing about me. This somehow makes me think about the recently highly mentioned topic of airport pat-downs, excuse my getting side tracked. I was personally surprised to see that people would choose to go through untested, and likely dangerous for their health scanners, before being pat down. Though I cherish my privacy, I frankly cherish my health even more...there are many different ways to think about the importance of privacy.