Back in the days of old media, issues of privacy and confidentiality were not as complex and layered as they are today. Seemingly, further advancements of new media come hand-in-hand with increased risks of security breaches, hackers, and an overall loss of privacy. 

Regarding privacy in the sense of what you choose to share with the world, the age of the Internet and new media have made it quite difficult to truly stay connected and linked with your inner circle--and your inner circle only. As detailed in "Facebook Privacy Is So Confusing Even the Zuckerberg Family Photo Isn't Private," Mark Zuckerburg's sister, Randi Zuckerburg, found herself in an undesired situation. Despite having set a private family photo to display to her friends only, someone outside of this jurisdiction managed to see the photo and shared it on Twitter. Here, there comes the saying that you should be cautious as to what you post on the Internet because it stays there forever. However, in this case, Randi's private photo was, obviously, not as private as she had intended. This came to be because due to the complicated privacy settings of Facebook that apparently were not as simple as they seemed, selecting 'friends only' doesn't quite mean 'friends only'. Rather, friends of people tagged in the photo--whether or not the poster is friends with those people--also assume the power of visibility and 'breach' into privacy. As explained in the article, "the term "friends" in this album at right indicates my friends and all the friends of people tagged in the post. Changing that involves clicking "custom" and unchecking a box that reads "friends of those tagged," (Greenberg, 3).

Clearly, in the once-been world without social media, this issue would not have happened, but, alas, times change and the only effective countermeasure is to ensure you (1) don't post anything you would end up regretting and (2) make sure all of your privacy settings are set as desired - do not assume the computers know what you want, you have to instruct the settings to as pleased.

On the other hand, confidentiality is another hot topic within the realms of new media. For instance, when you pay with your credit card at a typically trusted retail giant like Target, you expect no such issues like a security breach to occur. Nonetheless, hackers managed to gain access to confidential information of over 110 million customers. Instead of paying with cash, as were the days of old media, praying with credit cards which contain microtapes embedded with the owner's information make people much more susceptible to identity theft or fraud. With the good comes the bad, and so, with new media technology comes individuals trying to exploit it for personal gain. Thus, as the new media technologies advance, so should a company's level of internal/external controls and data encryption to protect customers. Thankfully, Kerr makes note that following the incident Target made plans to implement highly-encrypted chip-enabled smartcards (Kerr, 2). Following this implementation, Target may want to continue their regulation of controls as this just gives the hackers a new challenge to overcome.

Sources

• Greenfield, Rebecca. "Facebook Privacy Is So Confusing Even the Zuckerberg Family Photo Isn't Private," The Atlantic, December 26, 2012.  https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/12/facebook-privacy-so-confusing-even-zuckerberg-family-photo-isnt-private/320164/
• Kerr, Dara. "Target works on security-heavy credit cards, after breach," CNET, February 3, 2014. https://www.cnet.com/news/target-works-on-security-heavy-credit-cards-after-breach/