BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Parallel session: Legal and user issues in the online environment
Presentation title: Children and young people in social networks – privacy issues

Social networks are part of the daily life of young people. That is where they communicate with friends, make new friends, exchange experiences and opinions and talk about a lot of private things – often like in a face-to-face conversation. Most young people are very keen on this. But they are not always aware of the fact that they communicate not only with friends – everybody can read the content if it is not restricted to friends. Media literacy is essential to minimise the risks of social networks. Young people have to know that the Internet never forgets anything, that the Internet is not a private space, that everything you write in a social network can easily be spread. To improve information about these points and to show young people how they can protect their privacy in social networks, the Federal Ministry of Consumer Protection started the campaign “Watch your Web” in 2009. What is even more important than better information is the responsibility of the social networks themselves. Even the best media literacy has little effect if social networks change their privacy settings by defining data as “public” which the user had before defined as “just for friends”. Privacy by default is essential - especially for the protection of young Internet users. But we also need an effective legal framework which ensures that the operators take their responsibility for data protection and data security. In addition, the law must be applicable and enforceable on a global scale. This also requires an international legal framework for data protection. Besides, we need to improve privacy enhancing technologies. For example, if we had the possibility to attach an “expiry date” to uploaded data, the employer would not be able to find all the old things young people put on the Internet years ago.