1st body paragraph

Part of the reason that privacy is such an issue on social networking websites is due to the amount of information that users post on them. With more people than ever posting their personal information on the Internet there is no shortage of data to be compiled. “The ever-growing online social networks are part of the flood of Internet information that could be mined: some of the top sites like MySpace now have more than 80 million members.” (Marks). It is no mistake that the Internet information is being described as a “flood”. With the sheer volume of users that social networking sites have their records are expectedly overwhelming. It is easy to see a person getting overtaken by the violent sea of personal information. In addition to conveying the magnitude of the information it also implies its potential for danger. With all this personal information being available for anyone to access it creates a large opportunity for people to take advantage of unsuspecting users. In addition to the threat posed by other users looking at personal information there is also the prospect of corporations or the government getting a hold of it. Finally the image of a flood helps to illustrate how little control anyone has over the entire situation. Since each user posts all the information individually, it is near impossible to control the content that is available for others to see.