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Privacy in facebook
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PRIVACY ISSUES IN FACEBOOK What is Facebook ? ---- Facebook is the world's largest social network with more than 400 million active users worldwide . Given that it contained much detailed information that is arranged uniformly and aggregated into one place, makes it bound to be risks to privacy. Many users submit their data without being aware that it might be shared unknown users.The unknown users may then build a database for Facebook data to sell. Intruders may steall passwords or an entire database on Facebook. Origin ---- The company, founded in 2004 by a Harvard sophomore, Mark Zuckerberg, began life catering first to Harvard students and then to all high school and college students. It has since evolved into a broadly popular online destination used by both teenagers and adults of all ages. Like other social networks, the site allows its users to create a profile page and forge online links with friends and acquaintances. It has distinguished itself from rivals, partly by imposing a Spartan design ethos and limiting how users can change the appearance of their profile pages. Personal testimony about privacy on facebook Personal testimony by Matt McKeon on The Evolution of Privacy on Face book This is an excerpt from a user of face book about firsthand experience with face book and the evolution of privacy over the years. Over the past couple of years, the default privacy settings for a Face book user's personal information have become more and more permissive. They've also changed how your personal information is classified several times, sometimes in a manner that has been confusing for their users. This has largely been part of Face book’s effort to correlate, publish, and monetize their social graph: a massive database of entities and links that covers everything from where you live to the movies you like and the people you trust.Read more from the Business Insider Facebook applications ---- Applications set it apart from other social networking sites. facebook's first-party Applications include photos, videos, groups, events, marketplace, posted items, notes and gifts. These are Applications developed by Facebook and available to all users’. Here's a quick breakdown on what each Application does: The photos Application allows Facebook users’ to upload as many images as they like. If one Facebook user has a picture of another Facebook -user, they can tag the photo which will appear in both users’ photo albums. Facebook's video Application is similar in many ways to YouTube. Members can upload videos in almost every format. The groups Application, a users can join other users’ interest groups or can create one of their own. The events Application allows you to invite other Facebook users’ to a real-life gathering. Facebook's marketplace is a lot like craigslist -- it lets users’ connect with other people who want to buy or sell stuff. All transactions occur directly between users’ -- Facebook only hosts the exchange; it doesn't get involved in sales. The posted items Application can be used to post videos, songs or anything else on a Web page to profile. With the gifts Application, users can send another user a virtual gift in the form of a small icon. There are dozens of gifts to choose from, all designed by Susan Kare, who created the icons for the original Macintosh computer system. Facebook is always working on developing new Applications for users’. There are hundreds of other Applications available on the site. Facebook didn't develop these Applications -- other Facebook users’ did. Many sites give users limited access to an Application programming interface (API), which lets users develop Applications using the host site as a platform. But for most of these sites, user Applications aren't featured on the site prominently. Third-party Facebook applications can dramatically change the experience on the site, including a massive overhaul to profile page. What is privacy ? ---- According to Culnan (2000) Personal information can be identified as information that can be associated with an identifiable individual. Privacy in turn would be defined as people's ability to control the terms under which their personal information is acquired and used . Ensuring privacy is important factor when people considering use Internet applications; it is not surprising that privacy was ranked at the top of the most important future-oriented themes as identified in the eGovRTD2020. According to Dawes (2009) This pattern suggests that there is general agreement that trust, privacy, and identity are the most important areas for future attention. Privacy claimed by Facebook ---- Facebook is a certified licensee of the TRUSTe Privacy Seal Program. This means privacy policy and practices have been reviewed by TRUSTe. Facebook also adheres to the Safe Harbor framework developed by the U.S. Department of Commerce and the European Union. Facebook only share users name and profile picture in the search engines and their private search options. They may collect information about you from other users such as when a friend tags a user in a photo, video, or place, provides friend details, or indicates a relationship with other users. Facebook do not share users email address, religious and political views, photo albums with anyone. If the users want they can share that with any other user or make available to everyone. It doesn’t allow storing information from children under age 13. If someone is under age 13, Facebook deletes that information as quickly as possible. Facebook do not own or operate the Applications or websites that users use through Facebook Platform (such as games and utilities). Facebook do not own or operate the Applications or websites that use Facebook platform. That means that when user use those Applications and websites, Facebook take Prior to allow permission from user to access any information When users connect with an Application or website, that Application has access to user’s name, address, mobile phone number, birthday, friends’ names, profile pictures, gender, user IDs, connections, the location of users’ computer and access device and any content shared using the everyone privacy setting,. If the Application or website wants to access any other data, it will have to ask for users’ permission. Users can block specific Applications from accessing their information. If user found an Application or website that violates rules, user can report the violation to Facebook so that they can take action as necessary. Facebook use the information Facebook collect to try to provide a safe, efficient, and customized experience. Here are some of the details on how Facebook do that: Facebook may use information about user that Facebook collect from other Facebook users to supplement users profile. When users enter into transactions with others or make payments on Facebook, Facebook will share transaction information with only those third parties necessary to complete the transaction. Sometimes Facebook share aggregated information with third parties to help improve or promote our service. But Facebook do so in such a way that no individual user can be identified or linked to any specific action or information. Facebook also disclose information pursuant to subpoenas, court orders, or other requests (including criminal and civil matters) if Facebookhave a good faith belief that the response is required by law. This may include respecting requests from jurisdictions outside of the United States where Facebookhave a good faith belief that the response is required by law under the local laws in that jurisdiction, apply to users from that jurisdiction, and are consistent with generally accepted international standards. Facebookmay also share information when Facebook have a good faith belief it is necessary to prevent fraud or other illegal activity, to prevent imminent bodily harm, or to protect ourselves and users from people violating Facebook Statement of Rights and Responsibilities. This may include sharing information with other companies, lawyers, courts or other government entities. Facebooksave your profile information (connections, photos, etc.) When users delete an account. Removed and deleted information may persist in backup copies for up to 90 days, but will not be available to others. Privacy after death Facebook recently introduced an interesting future (see the form image below) that enables users to register other users (friends or relatives) when they pass away. This is a positive step towards protecting the privacy of the dead and their information from illegal use which can cause harm to those related to them. Facebook privacy in News * Contrite Facebook CEO promises new privacy controls * * Criticisms on Facebook privacy ---- * Facebook is not technically competent enough to be trusted. For example, their recent introduction of their "Like" button makes it rather easy for spammers to gain access to user’s feed and spam his/her social network. These are just the latest of a series of Keystone Kops mistakes, such as accidentally making users' profiles completely public, or the cross-site scripting hole that took them over two weeks to fix. They either don't care too much about user’s privacy or don't really have very good engineers, or perhaps both. * Facebook makes it incredibly difficult to truly delete users account. Facebook makes no promises about deleting user’s data and every Application the user has used may keep it as well. On top of that, account deletion is incredibly (and intentionally) confusing. There are an option to deactivate your account, which turns out not to be the same thing as deleting it. Deactivating means a user can still be tagged in photos and be spammed by Facebook. In fact, it's really not much different from not logging in for awhile. To actually delete your account, a user has to find a link buried in the on-line help ("buried” means it takes five clicks to get there). Basically, Facebook is trying to trick their users into allowing them to keep their data even after they've "deleted" their account. * Facebook's new privacy setting changes are obviously intended to get people to open up even more of their Facebook data to the public. The privacy transition-tool that guides users through the configuration will recommend preselect by default the setting to share the content they post to Facebook, such as status messages and wall posts, with everyone on the Internet, even though the default privacy level that those users had accepted previously was limited to Networks and Friends on Facebook * In the new privacy setting, information that the user used to control is now treated as Publicly Available. These changes are especially worrisome because even something as seemingly innocuous as your list of friends can reveal a great deal about you. In September, for example, an MIT study demonstrated that researchers could accurately predict a Facebook user's sexual orientation simply by examining the user's friends-list. This kind of data mining of social networks is a science still in its infancy; the amount of data that can be extrapolated from "publicly available information" will only increase with time. In addition to potentially revealing intimate facts about sexuality, politics, religion. * Facebook's recent introduction of a platform that, by default, gives third-party companies access to members' names, friend lists and hobbies to "personalize" their surfing experience. When a member logs onto a partner site, such as Yelp or Pandora, the content displayed is shaped by their own interests, as well as the activities of their Facebook friends. To disable this feature, a manual opt-out is required. * The Facebook privacy transition tool is clearly designed to push users to share much more of their Facebook info with everyone, a worrisome development that will likely cause a major shift in privacy level for most of Facebook's users, whether intentionally or inadvertently. * Facebook collects all the information without the consent of the user like the information from that device about your browser type, location, and IP address, as well as the pages you visit. * Date of birth and gender are required, none can delete them. * Even after you remove information from your profile or delete your account, copies of that information may remain viewable elsewhere to the extent it has been shared with others, it was otherwise distributed pursuant to your privacy settings, or it was copied or stored by other users. 
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