Net of safety

Children are becoming substantial contributors to online games and communities. The progressive development on the internet has revolutionised computer technology and oversimplified different tasks. However, the use of online applications have thrown open legal issues on ownership and privacy amongst the legal, computer science community and those involved in making regulatory policies. Social networking sites such as Facebook and Google Plus are posing new challenges to privacy as people, unaware of the risks involved, upload their personal data on such websites. Even children playing online games are posed with a host of shrewd marketing mechanisms in the form of additional points in return for filling up surveys, questionnaires and accepting cookies, etc.
The information gathered is thus an efficient and cost-effective form of extracting demographic patterns of knowledge, information and behaviour. This directly creates issues of privacy – especially for the most vulnerable amongst us. Laws in Pakistan on data protection and privacy are still in an embryonic stage and, hence, it will be difficult to attain relief in a court of law, if and when the need arose. Therefore, it is imperative that online users remain alert and act diligently when divulging sensitive information and parents need to monitor the use of online technology by their children.
Barrister Mobeen Shah
Nottingham
UK