About privacy and confidentiality in social applications Essay

About privacy and confidentiality in social applications - Essay Example Legal frameworks and ethical standards of various nations protect the interests of the users of social applications such as search engines and wikis in regard to their privacy and confidentiality of personal information. This includes protection of user information from unauthorized access, use or sale of confidential data by hackers. The designers and administrators of social applications are therefore mandated to ensure that private data on users is treated with utmost confidentiality. Regardless of this, the privacy and confidentiality of user information has been infringed by being exposed to unintended or unauthorized parties and used for unintended purposes by system attackers. This essay gives a critical analysis and discussion of the privacy and confidentiality of data and information within social applications including blogs, social networking applications, blogs and wikis. The paper includes a comprehensive review of literature with an aim of giving a background analysis o f the research on the topic. Past literature within journals, conference and workshop papers are analyzed including the methodologies used by the investigators on confidentiality and privacy within social applications. The proposed approach for an investigation into the privacy and confidentiality of data within social applications is also presented within this essay. The paper is based on the assumption that the breach of privacy and confidentiality of users is the greatest challenge that is facing social applications. Surveys on privacy and confidentiality within social networking applications and text chats reveal that these two aspects are considered to be an ethical standard and the recognized around which the development, maintenance and use of social applications should be based (Belanger & Crossler, 2011). Qualitative studies on legal frameworks and regulations on privacy and confidentiality reveal that these aspects are considered as one of