What is Public and What is Personal - Essay Example

The paper "What is Public and What is Personal?" is an outstanding example of an essay on business. With the increasing levels of competition in the market, the companies are under intense pressure to improve their competitiveness in the market. The situation has been aggravated by the entry of multinational companies that have huge financial base to segment the market, position their products strategically in the market, and attract the loyalty of the customers towards their products and services. Therefore, in order to ensure that they hire highly qualified personnel, they must scrutinize the information on their potential subordinates. Social media has become a crucial source of information. Initially, people thought that these are platforms to be used in sharing personal information. However, this is not the case anymore. With the increasing number of subscribers to social media sites, the companies cannot be able to protect private information by subscribers. Many hackers and other people with malicious ideas have gained access to the information that was deemed personal and used it against their owners either to extort money or intimidate them. Social media are no longer private sites but public sites where information can be viewed by anyone. 

Private information is one that cannot be shared with a third party. For instance, one cannot share the bank details or pin numbers of the account on social media. This is because someone can get access to information and use it against the owner. Therefore, the employees have the right to use the information posted on social media because they have become public sites. After the entry of the internet, people thought that they can use social media to save crucial information such as passwords. However, with time, it has dawned to many that there are many loopholes that can be used by cyber attackers in order to get access to this information. Therefore, all information that one posts to the internet or social media can be used by the employer. This is because it can have an impact on the reputation of the company. For instance, if a person states that he is gay or a lady is a lesbian and the company that he or she is applying for a job does not advocate for such marriages, then the employer can have information to decline the application. This is because competitors can use such information to gain an advantage in the market.
Any information that is on the public domain cannot be described as private. The behavior of a person can be easily predicted by his or her activities on social media. Through posts and responses, it is easy to know the character of a person and different aspects that can be expected from the person. Therefore, unless the company has used illegal means such as hacking, the rest of the information that can be accessed by other people is public information. This is an indication that people need to be careful about the information that they are posting on the internet because it can be easily used against them by their employer or any other person who can need it. Read More