Let's Face it!

Let’s face it. We can’t live without socializing! Socializing in the virtual world has become a part of our daily life, for the most of us if not all. Socializing and making new friends is a healthy trait to develop/maintain and nurture. And we all enjoy it until it comes back to bite us in some way. We're talking about the privacy issues that comes with the territory while socializing in the virtual world. Facebook is known to all of us, and we're sure you’ll agree that the friends circle is growing in Facebook for most of us. iKolam also happens to be a social site where we make friends. It is more enjoyable when we do/exchange information or artworks together in sites like iKolam. And sharing involves giving out information about ourselves, and getting information back in return from our friends. Trouble starts when we’ve given out too much information online, and people other than friends start to take notice. And, that has happened in this site too. One of our overzealous member had posted some personal information quiet a few times in this site (including the location) and ended up getting stalked virtually. It became such a nuisance that the member had to stop posting here altogether. Sometimes, personal vendettas get dragged into social networking sites as well, leading to an even bigger mess. And that too has happened with us here at iKolam. But now, there is one more perspective to the privacy issue that we need to be cautious about. Please be aware that there are people who could be members in iKolam and Facebook, and that they can end up cross linking information back and forth any way they see fit. We had received emails from some of our members that there are impersonators who are targeting them to get more information about someone they might be after. Although it is not possible to be in control of every aspect of our lives, it is possible to take precautions when it comes to giving out too many details from your personal lives. Please let us know if someone from this site has gotten hold of your email and is spamming you. We can’t do much, but we can try to find out more and give you some tips to get out of a bad situation. By the way, we hope you realize that when you forward your pictures to your friends/relatives, anybody can forward copies to anyone else, and without your knowledge it can end up in the wrong hands, although unintentional. We were shocked to receive an email from a “friend’s friend” that she was pleased to “meet” us through one of our pictures that our friend took. It didn’t feel comfortable to know that our family pictures were forwarded to someone who we never met, yet. I guess we all have varying degrees of comfort-zones. :) As a precaution, we have been and will be placing member accounts on hold when we encounter suspicious activities related to that account. We hope you'll share your thoughts on this subject. We're sure it can help some people.