Typical "childhood naivete" or unaware consumers

           So I just finished a paper from my English class where I focus on what companies do with consumers information when they are on the internet, how the government factors in and why the government shouldn't use information to make laws to censor the internet.

           In between the three week process the teacher gives us to prepare for our research essay, I got a pep talk (or rather the class got a pep talk) in internet ethics (did not use conversation in paper) which refers more to consumer awareness more than the companies .

            Nonetheless, the relevance was staggering because depending on how consumer use specific businesses (like Facebook, or Google) those companies give part or all of peoples information to 3rd party or affiliate companies. In turn, those companies give a portion of that information to the government. Now the government may not be given information directly if the information is not relevant to the information they want. The data the government gets most likely in my (naive honest) belief goes toward surveys and consensus. Some of the information however does get kept.

         With that being said, peoples information is being used, and if not by the government on a national level, then it is being used by companies on a corporate level which is a problem.

          So I did a survey/experiment/analysis/conversation with some classmates, I told two women about what the social network company, Google via Google+ does with their information and asked them to Google themselves and one of the classmates found pictures of a younger relative on Google image search. That relative's face was all it took for her to close down her account which says something and it is not just the fact that she felt virtually violated.

           The biggest problem is that younger adults use the internet without understanding how the internet works and are willing to display content to people across the world that they wouldn't show their parents. Teens and 20 somethings should be careful, when you post something on the cloud: 1) it is assumed you can't get it back and 2) you directly or indirectly say its OK for the internet to store and keep your information, uploads, data, accounts etc. This is usually due to emotional naivete or reckless disregard.

          I admit when I was a teen, I was unaware of how certain aspects of the internet worked, but a 17 when I did several types of odds and end jobs on the internet, I gave consent that companies used my information(especially since I got paid). Hell I used my information so much the companies did not want to give me credit since I did a similar job on their company's network. \

The point is consumers should be aware of what they are getting into when they use the internet and expose their information, because once it is out their it is pretty hard to get it out of the cloud. The government may or may not be able to protect consumers as hinted above.