Monday, May 07, 2007

Worry About Personal Information

Monday, May seventh, two thousand and seven

A friend of mine asked me yesterday whether western people tend not to be worried that their personal information is leaked. Actually, most Japanese people don't open their real names and photographs of their faces(facial portrait) on social networking sites or something like that, but lots of western people do that. I guess the reason Japanese people don't open their real name on the web sites is that it's easy to find out their other information by googling with their real names written in Kanji characters. In fact, when you google with my real name written in Kanji, my factory information comes up. As a matter of fact, it's kind of rare that someone has the same Kanji name as a Japanese person has. On the other hand, it's relatively difficult to get western people's detail information by googling with their real names even though Google is the most powerful search engine in the world, because their names are written in English or other alphabets. I hope you understand what I mean, although my guess might not be right.
Anyway, there are quite a few bad networkers who often try to find fault with other people in Japan, that's why Japanese people tend not to open their real names on the Net.


"quotes from LONGMAN Dictionary of Contemporary English"
find fault with: to criticize someone or something, often unfairly and frequently(~のあら捜しをする、けちをつける)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi, Pro.
Your idea is interesting!
I've never thought of kanji might affect Japanese people's attitudes that lead to letting their guard up about online privacy.

I have another idea.
You've seen so many pixilated (モザイク) faces and private parts in Japan.
But, in western countries, not at all. It's common sense to care about privacy in Japan.

I've heard that some jerk people copy and paste mixi users' diary and show them on 2 Channel and write evil and mean comments and critize them.

I often see foreign myspace users post photos of their friends. I wonder if they ask their friends if it is OK. What do you think?

plow7010 said...

Hi Makiko,
Thanx for your comment.

AS you say, I know foreign myspace users do that. I guess they don't get their friends' permission. They might think it's difficult to find out who they are by only the photos. Anyway, I personally think Japanese networkers are more sensitive about privacy on SNSs than them.