Lab+week+4


 * Online community - Connected or disconnected?**

I am not using a lot of facebook or twitter. In China, we have an online community called renren.com ([]). The function is really samiliar with facebook. When I log into renren.com. I do feel that I am connected by this online community. Through renren.com, I found my old friends and classmates in middle school, university. I already lost communication with them after I wen to Canada, but in renren.com, we met again. We talked in online chat room, send private massages to each other, and posted or watched our pictures. It is good to connect myself with the world.

From the other hand, our privacy expose online. Everyone can find you through your profile, see your pictures, invite you as their friends. It is kind of dangerouse because no one know who hide behind the screen. For the safe reason, I would rather break this connection with online community.

Another example is makeupalley.com. It is a online beauty discussion forum, especially for girls. In makeupalley, we swap cosmetics which we don't need any more. Of course we don't know each other before trading. The deal is based on trust. Unfortunitly, I was swaplifted by one swapper and I reported her information to USA Internet Fraud Investigation Dept. Then I found that there were other 30 girls swaplifted by the same swaplifter. So we decided to get her caughter. I google her information and finally found her real indentity on facebook. According to the information on facebook, local police caught her easily. The result developed as we expected, but from this swaplift, none of us would go online to do any unsure deal with the people we didn't know.