Our public private lives

14 November 2010 (The Star)

Malaysians are certainly no wallflowers on Facebook and other social networking sites. From political views to sexual fantasies, many eagerly post personal details online without realising the dangers of oversharing their personal data.

INTRODUCING our newest family member 3kg Ashraf Fared, mom & baby doing great."

The explosion of social media networks like Twitter and Facebook has made sharing life experiences like this instant and public.

So many personal news flashes are blitzing us around the clock that most of us will feel lost without them.

But how many of us in Malaysia are ready for messages like "I am 5cm dilated now" or "God, I’m crowning"?

A mother from England recently pushed the boundaries of sharing when she gave live updates on Twitter during the birth of her son-all painful 13 hours of it. Fi Star-Stone, 34, had told British media that she merely wanted to dispel some of the myths of childbirth by sharing her experience with her friends and family.

In Malaysia, some topics, childbirth included, are still socially baulked at but if you log onto any of the social media networks, you will see that we Malaysians are no passive wallflowers.

From political views and religious beliefs to who they are dating and what they had for lunch, many Malaysians are eager to share their personal opinions and information online.

And according to a survey by international market research firm TNS recently, we are right at the forefront where social networking and micro blogging are concerned.

Malaysians, it revealed, spent the most time-nine hours weekly-on social networking sites compared with other nationals worldwide.

Malaysians are also ranked as the most cyber-social people in the world with an average of 233 friends compared with 12 in Japan and 68 in China.

When it comes to time spent online, Malaysians are on par with the Americans (an average of 21 hours) and the British (22 hours), with an average of 20 hours online per week.

This worries cyber security experts like Adli Abd Wahid, head of the Malaysian Computer Emergency Response Team (MyCERT) at CyberSecurity Malaysia as he feels many Malaysians are still unaware of the implications of over-sharing their personal data on the web and the threats to their privacy.

"If you look at what some Malaysians post, you will get worried-don’t they realise that everyone can read this?" he points out.

New normal

Acts of divulging excessive personal information on the Internet-or "oversharing" as it is defined by Webster’s New World Dictionary in 2008-is hardly a new phenomenon.

Even way back in the 1990s, people have been sharing personal information on the Net. "Archaic" internet services like personal websites and blogs-long before social media networks burst out on the scene-provided platforms for those who wanted to put themselves out there.

The major difference is that most people then kept a nickname or separate identity on the Internet. Not many people used their real names for e-mail either. Try asking for someone’s personal e-mail address and they would have reacted as if you had just asked them for their kidneys.

And those who caught the "too much information" syndrome found out the hard way how their lives can be affected by their lack of discretion.

K. Mary got a memo from her human resources manager, as well as nasty e-mail, after she commented on her bosses (who she described using nicknames) in her blog. She found it impossible to continue working at her company after receiving snide remarks and the cold shoulder from her slighted superiors.

Rita Y.* kept a blog on her sexual fantasies under a pseudonym but she kept worrying about her identity getting exposed, especially after she wrote about her sexual fantasies with her boss. The stress got too much that she decided to quit her job.

This new social network surge, however, is pushing everyone "out there" whether he/she wants it or not.

Designer and programmes manager Grey Yeoh feels that many Malaysians now do want to be out there on the Inter­net.

"I have friends who update their tweet and facebook every minute. They will post whatever they do, every little thing.

"I think that is over-exposure. Whether you see it as a weakness or a bad thing, it exposes your character," he says.

He points out that the new cyber-social behaviour works on the conceit that everyone in a person’s social circle not only wants to know, but needs to know, what the person is having for lunch.

"But really, do people need to know in detail what you are doing every minute of the day, and where?"

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg loves to bring up the reaction he got when he first introduced the News Feed on the social network in 2006 whenever the "online privacy" debate is stirred up. At that time, users freaked out to see their every little update instantly blasted out to their friends and demanded for the service to be taken down.

The outcry surprised him, he reportedly said, but he was convinced that once people tried it, they would get over their shock and like it. And they did.

As Zuckerberg claimed early this year, people no longer have an expectation of privacy. It is no longer a "social norm", he was quoted saying. "People have really gotten comfortable not only sharing more information and different kinds, but more openly and with more people. That social norm is just something that has evolved over time."

Yeoh agrees that this is the norm for many young Malaysians who do not seem to have any hang-ups and fears about online privacy and sharing their personal information on the Net. However, he questions their knowledge on cyber etiquette and security, especially with their alarming openness with strangers over the Net.

"Sometimes they do not know what can be used against them from the Internet.

"What I’m saying is that you have to be careful about what you post. Even if you think that no one will read it, there are those who will. I think many Malaysians are still IT-illiterate. They are not aware of how dangerous it is to expose yourself on the Internet. People are not educated enough about privacy, copyright infringement and laws."

Student Amirah Jasni says she and her friends are still searching for the right balance of privacy and oversharing.

"To make it worse, values are changing, so we are also struggling to balance sensitivities with safety issues. What is acceptable and what is not is constantly changing. Even outside, my old aunts do not see anything wrong with asking about personal things like someone’s salary or their marital status," she says.

Families of victims in the recent North-South Expressway bus accident in Negri Sembilan were upset when video recordings of the tragedy were uploaded on Facebook by survivors and witnesses. Calling them disrespectful and insensitive, the families said the people were only adding to their misery.

Social network is creating a thin line between the personal and public, notes Adli, and coupled with the cultural and global shifts, people are struggling to find the balance.

"People used to have an anonymous or a secret identity online to post explicit stuff about themselves. Now everyone keeps their real identity when they go online but they still post their secrets or intimate and explicit information about themselves online," he quips.

Even Malaysians now have no qualms about posting naked and explicit pictures of themselves.

One secondary schoolgirl reportedly posted 50 pictures of herself in the nude, in the shower and even of her giving boys oral sex on her Friendster account.

Deep threat

Consultant psychologist Valerie Jacques says that it is normal for a person to want to share his or her personal information with others.

Exposing oneself and sharing personal details are rooted in basic psychological needs.

"However, if these needs are not met within family and warm blooded relationships, then it will begin in cyberspace where it is pretty cold but gives a false hope of warmth."

She observes that oversharing may also be a trend because we are living in a world where "people want friends and don’t have any".

"Either they are stuck behind their PCs at work or they spend so many hours in the office and behind a screen that being part of social networks is important. So, they begin to share more and more about themselves until they expose themselves without realising it or understanding the consequences,’’ she says, conceding that it is pretty high risk behaviour to be indiscriminate about who you befriend.

Adli concurs, reminding Malaysian users to be careful about who they accept as their Facebook friends.

"Usually I tell people, if you have 10 friends in real life and 1,000 friends online, you need to ask yourself who they are. Either you are befriending people whom you don’t know or those whom you should not be friends with. Or it just means your real life sucks, so you need to improve your social skills," he says frankly.

Jacques believes that with the right knowledge, people can control their tendencies to overshare.

"If we know how people can use and abuse your personal information and how people are taken for a ride and used by others for their own gain, then the indivi­dual will have more control over these tendencies to share. If not, it seems like a hunger and thirst to be seen, acknowledged, recognised and loved, among others."

A college student who befriended a 30-something man in an online chat room three years ago found out the consequences of his oversharing on the Internet recently.

Not long after they became friends, the older guy asked the student for an online lesson. "He wanted me to teach him how to masturbate, so I showed him through a webcam," said the 22-year-old.

Unbeknown to him, his "friend" recorded his act, which he used to blackmail him for more sexual favours and money.

This is one of the reasons Lilian Chan, better known as The Obnoxious 5x Mom on the Net, is careful about what she writes on her blog.

Chan, who has been blogging about her life as a mother since October 2003, says that initially, only a handful of people knew about her blog.

"Now a lot of people know about it-my Catholic church priests, in-laws, sons, neighbours and others. So, I am rather guarded on what I express. However, I don’t believe in being a hypocrite. I still say what I strongly feel about."

One thing she refrains from is making false accusations or poking fun at people.

"I believe a blog is an extension of a person. So, I don’t normally go and find fault or make false accusations against people. There is then no reason why I will get any backlash. If indeed I make a mistake, I quickly apologise."

What she admits to is poking fun at politicians. "But I know the line between being funny and making seditious remarks, so I am pretty safe," she says.

Mimi* found oversharing on the Internet a big help when she was going through a bad time with her husband.

After she discovered that her husband was two-timing her with her own friend, she started a blog to vent her rage.

"I told my closest friends about it, and it became one big bi***ing session. After a while, it became ridiculous, but venting on the blog helped me work through my emotions and it helped me get back on my own two feet."

When she felt better, Mimi removed her blog from the web.

Jacques agrees that venting online can be healthy but warns that it may have dire consequences if one is not careful.

"The question is who is venting and to whom? Also when venting is done in a public space and others get the privilege of reading stuff, this can be taken in the wrong way and then with different perception, people are viewed and thus treated differently," she says.

Adli concurs. "Most importantly, when you post anything on the Internet, especially something that may affect you, your career or your family, you have to understand that it will be available to basically the whole world."