The dangers of sharing personal details with the internet community.
By: Jennie Brouse
The internet is a wild place where people have the ability and option to share whatever comes to their minds. This freedom to post almost anything online can be disturbing, weird or even dangerous. There are many aspects of oversharing on the internet that I have problems with, but safety concerns are among the most important.
In what is not really a safety concern and more of a side-eyed concern, we have become more comfortable with sharing intimate details of our relationships than ever before. I cannot count how many times I have been scrolling through social media, specifically Reddit, and seen a post where a person is talking about their sex life for the internet to weigh in on.
These internet sharers or help seekers are not even consulting their partners before asking the internet how to fix their relationships; basic communication would have solved 98% of the posts I’ve seen without putting their relationship in jeopardy after airing their dirty laundry.
But instead of communicating, these couples are exposing intimate details about their partners’ lives and most of them end up with an edit of “they broke up with me because they were upset I posted about it.” No wonder they were upset, they didn’t want this information shared for the world to see.
Another aspect of oversharing on the internet that many may not see as an issue is house/apartment tours. Especially for people who have a larger presence on social media, posting an in-depth tour of your home tends to make me anxious for the creator. If the house/apartment tour was requested by a viewer, I get even more anxious.
I may be a hypocrite because frankly, I do enjoy watching home tours, especially on HGTV or even looking at Zillow listings, but it recently came to my attention how dangerous these tours can be.
Imagine being a relatively famous person, and someone happens to figure out your address. You’ve just posted your new mansion tour, gloating about all of the secret passageways hidden behind bookcases. Now, not only was your address easy to find, but your go-to hiding spot has been exposed for the world to see, and you’ve given your potential intruder what is essentially a map of your home so they can easily find their way around.
Even if someone is not trying to seek out the person posting the video, but instead plans to burglarize the person’s home, the aforementioned hiding spots are exposed as well as likely a schedule for a content creator who posts throughout the day. For example, the content creator is at the nail salon for the next hour, the perpetrator now knows the home is currently unoccupied and where everything is hidden.
Location sharing is another major aspect of social media that seems to have gotten way too normalized for my liking. A very recent example of the dangers of location sharing can be made with a look at the Sept. 12 shooting of rapper PnB Rock. The current story, at the time of this article being written, is that shortly before PnB Rock was murdered, his girlfriend had posted their location on her Instagram story, making it easy for any person with a vendetta against him to figure out where he was and murder him.
PnB Rock is not the only person who has fallen victim after a post on social media exposed one’s location, he is one of many victims who have been harmed or killed as a result of similar actions.
I am also disturbed by how easy it can be to find our friends through social media without even needing to post anything. Snapchat has this “fun” little feature where users can see their friends’ locations just based on when they were last using the app. This feature can be turned off, and it has been on my account for years, but it is still common practice for users to check in on their friends without them even needing to know.
There are so many more aspects of internet oversharing that I could get into, but I will end with a PSA to please be aware of what you post and how it can negatively affect you. Be safe, please.