many people put their personal information online (address, telephone, numbers, so on) for purposes such as signing up for social networks or online banking. Is this a positive or negative development?

Owing to the communication revolution over recent years, people worldwide share their personal information on the internet to set online profiles. Opinions widely vary as to whether this novel change is positive or not. While the merits of this progress cannot be neglected, I believe the overall result of online sharing is negative on the grounds of several reasons, which will be discussed in this essay. There exist several reasons to justify why putting personal information on the internet is beneficial. First and foremost, it is believed that police can track criminals more easily and faster because of the accessibility to this data. Indeed, due to the fact that criminals have become more devious, especially in terms of cybercrime, this personal information would be invaluable for many organizations like the FBI. This, in turn, would decrease the percentage of fraud activities in societies, and thus it would be seen as positive progress. Conversely, this development, similar to every other development, has disadvantages as well. It is undeniable that people have the right to keep their personal information secret. In the first place, the information may be theft by hackers, resulting in adverse consequences for individuals' lives. Money laundry or emptying bank account by hackers are good illustrations for this. Furthermore, the majority of people, especially youngsters who are not internet savvy enough, maybe cyberbullied or abused. As a case in point, people would be blackmailed by those who are probed into their personal photos on social networks. In conclusion, although putting information online would sound beneficial in some situations, the demerits associated with this development outweigh its merits. So from my point of view, it is negative progress.