Facebook: Profile Privacy

Facebook: Profile Privacy

Facebook is a fast growing social networking site enabling people from all over the globe to set up profiles about themselves and share information with friends. It allows you to have control over the information you put into your profile to share with your friends and also allows you access to other peoples shared information. The social networking culture has taken a new face in communications and we are seeing people of all ages interacting with this technology in a way not seen ever before. Some seem to rely on this form of communication more and more each day, gathering information about other people and sharing more about themselves. Because of the growing success of online social networking people find it too easy to reveal information about themselves that they probably would not reveal to someone they meet on the bus. This freedom of expression is widely acceptable and has caught the attention of hackers and the like providing many doors into our personal information, making their job easier now than it used to be. Our personal information put onto the web can be distributed within seconds by a click of the mouse. It is within that second that the ways in which you conduct ourselves and the measures we take online matters. As the age of online communication is embedded in our everyday lives, we as users need to educate ourselves on exactly what is going on after a click of the mouse is made and who is waiting on the other side for that information about you and what are they doing with it. The way in which the information circulating the networks is handled will be discussed, focusing on the privacy issues of private information put onto a Facebook profile. Facebook’s Privacy Policy as well as their Terms of Use will be examined and suggestions on how to further protect your Facebook profile will be considered.

Information posted by the user as content on their profile is available for Facebook to store and use for other purposes however they see fit, according to Facebook’s Terms of Use (2008):
By posting user content to any part of the Site, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to the Company an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide licence (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such User Content for nay purpose, commercial, advertising, or otherwise, or in connection with the site or the promotion thereof, to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such User Content, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing. (p.3)
A user binds into this agreement upon signing up for a profile with Facebook. Although users are all aware of the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy tab to be clicked on signup, many do not bother to read the print inside the links next to the box. This is where the issue of your profile being kept “private” becomes an issue. If the user is not aware of the conditions of using the site they will end up passing their private information onto third parties without even knowing. According to the Terms of Use, Facebook will not pass any of your contact or personal information to Third parties unless you grant them permission to do so. Herein lies the problem and we return back to the user being aware of the conditions of the site. Applications used on Facebook are representative of the Third parties. Once a networker uses one of those applications, their information is then sold to the relevant Third parties, which in turn sends that information to their other connected companies. The networker has all the power to control the information that gets released to unknown people, it is just wether they are prepared to educate themselves about the workings of the Cyber world.

In addition, as soon as personal information; contact details, photos, likes, dislikes; are sold to advertisers and other companies they immediately become a target for phishing attacks. “This all highlights how social networking sites are the latest front in the war against threats of all types” (Hunter, 2008, p.17). These attacks aim at gathering bank account as well as credit card details. An invitation from a friend might come through on the users profile wall requesting them to join the application, cause or become a member of something. The link could be to an unsafe site containing malicious software which then retrieves the information it needs. Control of this is not the responsibility of Facebook (2008):
Such Third party sites and Third party Applications, software or Content are not investigated, monitored or checked for accuracy, appropriateness, or completeness by us, and we are not responsible for any Third party accessed through the site…. (p.5)

Furnell (2008) conducted an experiment in the United States with 32, 16-17 year olds about their experiences with social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace and Bebo. According to the results 19% said they sent requests to people they didn’t know, 25% said they have received friend requests by people they didn’t know 15% of whom accepted the request. Although this questionnaire was carried out with small percentage of the users on Facebook, it is still an astounding fact that many users, especially teenagers, as at risk of revealing too much information to the wrong people. It is unknown who is sitting at the other end of that profile picture. In the Cyber world we are only who we say we are on the keyboard or screen.

The Privacy Policy of Facebook leaves much up to the networker. Jones & Stoltren (2005) say there are two types of categories user submitted information can be put into; First party information (Personal, basic, professional, contact information, and profile picture) and Third party information subdivided into “My photos” and “Wall”. Facebook default settings are set at all users to view your networks, profile and personal information. According to getsofaonline.org 13% of users post photographs of other people without their consent with 18-24 year olds being 27% of them. Facebook states in their Privacy Policy (2008) that it cannot control what other users do who you choose to share your information with, therefore not guaranteeing that your page will not be viewed by unknown people. Facebook collects information about you from other sources for a more personalised experience. Information of a user on Facebook is used for people to find you, networks to access your profile, information to be sent and received by Facebook by you and customising what is on your page to your preference information collected by Facebook. The spectrum is so broad in regards to the amount of your information that it continuously circulating networks and the site. One Privacy issue that Facebook (2008) has made an effort to control is the results in search engines in regard to a users’ profile. Google, Yahoo! and the like are blocked from searching for keywords within a users’ profile. The search is limited to and does not go beyond the user’s name and profile picture.

The amount of personal information released on Facebook is entirely up to the user and Facebook has provided some powerful control settings. If utilise to its full potential, personal information and transference of information and daily doings on Facebook can and will be fully controlled. Sophos has put together a breakdown of being able to utilise the Facebook privacy settings to their full potential. There are three things a user is able to customize; Profile, Contact information and Application of Profile.

First change to make is who is able to view your profile. As mentioned before, Facebook’s default settings allow everyone in your networks and all your friends to view your profile. Users are recommended to select the “Only my friends” option as this will limit viewing of your profile and what you post onto it, as well as information shared with only the people in the friends list. This option can be further broken down into six other categories, all of which Sophos recommends to customise. Online status should be changed to either the “No one” or the “Only my friends” option. The next change should be status updates. Unless you want everyone in your network to see how you feel today (could be a colleague or employer in one of your networks) this option should be set at “Only my friends”. The third is Friends should only be viewed by people you know so “Only my friends” is selected. Fourth, wall, should be set at “Only friends” because this is the information that pops up on everyone’s profile as an interesting read. If you do not want everyone to know about what you are up to on the weekend with who, then limit it to just your friends. The same option is to be selected for photos and videos tagged. If you do not want people you do not know to see how you behave in your free time then do not show them what does not concern them. Choosing setting options as these will provide you with a much more secure social networking experience minimising the threat of identity theft, malicious sites and revealing too much to strangers.

Facebook’s Terms of Use and Privacy Policy both clearly state that Facebook and its company are not responsible for any harm that might come to the user upon the use of the site. Control of the content of the user’s page and the way in which it is used is solely the responsibility of that user, until the user provides permission to Facebook to use the information as specified. However, in releasing control of the information of the profile, Facebook has also clearly stated that all content, i.e. photographs, videos, music etc uploaded onto the site, as soon as they are, they become the property of Facebook and therefore enables them to what ever they please with them. That is the agreement the user agrees to and therein poses the problem. Is it really the issue of Facebook that it does not monitor the safety of information of users and the privacy of that information when signing up alone and wanting to be apart of an online community is the beginning of the user inviting unwanted eyes into their lives, allowing hundreds of people to watch their activities and the progress of their lives. It begins and ends with the user. Responsibility, although morally it is, is not that of Facebook and its site but rather of the person looking to be active in the online world. If users think that being apart of Facebook does not interfere with their physical private lives, we as users, need to make our own decisions on what we deem as private, and then make the appropriate moves to satisfy that decision.



References

Furnell, S. (2008). End-user security culture: A lesson that will never be learnt?. Computer Fraud & Security, 4(2008). Retrieved December 7, 2008, from http://www.sciencedirect.com.libraryproxy.griffith.edu.au/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6VNT-4S807WG-F&_user=79777&_coverDate=04%2F30%2F2008&_alid=839566690&_rdoc=9&_fmt=high&_orig=search&_cdi=6187&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_ct=76&_acct=C000006418&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=79777&md5=ea1217227511e800c4f3d1807d28cb76

Hunter, P. (2008). Social networking: the focus for the new threats- and old ones. Computer Fraud & Security, 7(2008). Retrieved December 8, 2008, from http://www.sciencedirect.com.libraryproxy.griffith.edu.au/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6VNT-4T3F9B5-D&_user=79777&_coverDate=07%2F31%2F2008&_alid=839482795&_rdoc=17&_fmt=high&_orig=mlkt&_cdi=6187&_sort=v&_st=17&_docanchor=&view=c&_ct=99&_acct=C000006418&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=79777&md5=4e5d2f42ca4b2fd721fecff711f9f515

Jones, H., Soltren, J. (2005). Facebook: Threats to Privacy. Retrieved December 7, 2008, from http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/classes/6.805/student-papers/fall05-papers/facebook.pdf

Facebook. (2008). Facebook: Privacy Policy. Retrieved December 7, 2008, from http://www.facebook.com/policy.php

Facebook. (2008). Facebook: Terms of Use. Retrieved December 7, 2008, from http://www.facebook.com/terms.php

Sophos. (2008). Sophos recommends: Profile privacy settings. Retrieved December 7, 2008, from http://www.sophos.com/security/best-practice/facebook-profile.html