Facebook's privacy leap of faith
NDP Candidate Ray Lam's racy Facebook photos.
KELOWNA, B.C. (CUP) — As we start the new decade, there is clearly one great difference from the last: we are on the Internet now more than we have ever been. We’re also more connected more than we have ever been.
More than 350 million users are have joined Facebook since the site opened in 2004. Between Gmail, Google’s retained search data, YouTube, and Google Image Search, huge amounts of our information is stored on the Internet with one company. Google’s unofficial motto since its founding has been “Don’t be evil.” But is that true of the whole Internet?
Issues of privacy on Facebook have recently come to the forefront thanks to Canada’s privacy commissioner Jennifer Stoddart, who identified several concerns with Facebook’s operation, including the sharing of personal information, the storage of personal information after Facebook accounts close and the confusing nature of the site’s privacy information.
According to Richard Rosenberg, a professor of computer science at University of British Columbia, the fact that Canada takes a leadership role on this our privacy structure is unique in North America. “When they operate in the States, they don’t really have privacy laws they have to deal with except individual ones in states, which are quite weak," he said.
One of the big problems with social networking, according to Rosenberg, is that storage of information. “You get to post pictures, you get to tell your friends where you’re travelling and who you’ve met recently, and so on. It’s a social network, after all. That’s exactly what you want to do,” he said. “The long-term problem is, suppose you want to get off Facebook. What happens to all that information that’s been gathered there?”
Some of the changes that were made after Stoddart’s concerns were brought to light last year include the ability to change the privacy protection of each individual post you make on Facebook, a move away from using networks to share information, and clearer controls when it comes to third-party applications.
At the same time, however, Facebook made a user’s name, profile picture, gender, current city, friends list, and pages publicly available and drew ire for a privacy “transition tool” that recommended users to open up much of their content to “everyone,” which now means the entire Internet, with or without a Facebook account. New accounts, according to the Globe and Mail, also come on the most lax privacy setting.
The more information available to everyone on Facebook, the greater potential exists for advertising, and according to Rosenberg, that’s how social networking sites make their money. “They don’t make money (from) their users unless they can get something that sells,” he said. “What they had been doing . . . (was) using information from their different clients and going through it all to try and find out themes and common interests that could then be marketed to companies to send these people advertisements.”
The privacy issues that come to the forefront are no longer about whether or not Facebook uses information without consent, but whether users are choosing to protect themselves.
“There’s a lot of concern about whether or not people are aware of this, and there are a lot of privacy controls that people could take advantage of,” Rosenberg said, “but most people don’t really know about them — or, as it turns out, most people don’t care about them, especially kids.”
The foibles of privacy protection are not new around the Internet. “If you look very carefully at a website, you’d see something at the end that says privacy guidelines,” Rosenberg said. “For most people, I looked at these things, and I couldn’t imagine most people would read this stuff.” That puts the onus on users that may not be paying attention, according to him. “You can’t say that you didn’t have access to the rules of the game as described by the company whose products you’re using.”
At the same time, stories about problems when social networking information becomes public are becoming more commonplace. In the 2009 British Columbia provincial election, NDP candidate Ray Lam was forced to resign after photos surfaced on Facebook where he was depicted groping a woman and being drunk in his underwear.
Additionally, the new privacy settings opened up 270 private photos starring Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, which may or may not have been his choice. Facebook did not return an interview request relating to this article.
This is also sometimes a problem for people trying to get a job, according to Rosenberg. “Very often, people are applying for jobs, applying to school,” he said, and, “once they apply, their name is being run through by the admissions officers or the employment officers to see what kind of things those people are doing.”
The issue comes down to the permanence of the Internet, and our trust in the companies that run it. “Once information is stored on the Internet, it’s generally out there forever. It’s not going to disappear — companies don’t go broke and don’t disappear so quickly, so information has some permanency,” said Rosenberg.
“So much information (is) out there, it’s as if there’s now some feeling amongst most people that sharing information is obviously a good thing, and that everyone that gets access to it will do the right thing.” That implies a strong basis of faith, however, he said. “You’re sort of taking the chance on the good will of the companies, and I think that’s not the kind of situation you want to release and share personal information about yourself.”
All you can really do is trust them to not be evil. We can trust them, right?
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Facebook’s growing collection of apps have ushered in a new era of casual gaming on the social networking service. Everyone from high-schoolers to thirty-year olds play social games like FarmVille and Mafia Wars.
Part of the way these games make their money is by microtransactions; you can wait to gain more in-game items with time, or you can exchange your real-life money for virtual currency.
Don’t have a credit card? A new revenue stream for these casual Facebook games has cropped up. Lead-generating ads are a way to fast-track those tractors without spending virtual cash directly.
Click through to an advertisement and do something for them, like sign up for Internet video service Netflix, and you get your precious points. However, it’s come to light lately that some lead-generating ads have been scamming.
Tech news blog TechCrunch pointed out that some ads that advertise free points for performing an activity like taking an IQ test, ask for your cellphone number, and when you’ve entered in the PIN, add a $9.99 per month charge to your account.
“People on Facebook won’t pay for anything,” said Dennis Yu, the online advertising CEO who wrote the expose on the issue for TechCrunch. “They don’t have credit cards, they don’t want credit cards, and they are not interested in shopping. But you can trick them.”
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