Our attitudes toward sharing information on the Web have changed dramatically over the past 10 years. MySpace, Facebook and Twitter now allow us to keep our social networks updated with the most mundane of information. Why are these sites so popular and why are we so willing to share what we had for breakfast with the world? More importantly, what are the ramifications of sharing this type of information?
In the early 1990s, people were afraid to shop online. It was assumed that entering credit card details over the Internet was risky, but in fact it was and always has been more secure than giving your details out over the phone. Data taken over the Web is encrypted, and even the owners of the site can’t tell you your password or credit card number if they wanted to.
As the Internet has developed, people have become less wary. Gone are the days when identify theft was considered a major concern, when users expect to be ripped off on eBay or to have their credit card details stolen and distributed when shopping online. When Amazon.com, for example, started to recommend purchases to its users based on their shopping and browsing habits, this was considered by many to be a breach of privacy. Now it’s something we expect on all good shopping sites. When Google told the world it would provide relevant advertisements inside Gmail — for instance, if you are talking about carnations, it might suggest a local florist where they can be bought — the knee-jerk reaction was to assume that Google was monitoring users’ e-mails. Now no one seems to mind.
It appears that sometime between the millennium and the present day the majority of Internet users have lowered their guard. We are willing to share tidbits of information on a daily basis, via Twitter, Facebook or one of the other countless social networking sites. The information we share seems harmless enough, so we share it, because it gives us a few minutes of pleasure to tap out a message and receive instant gratification.
The irony is that the information we share can be more dangerous now than ever. Take, for example, companies such as Virgin Airlines that have been known to use Facebook to keep tabs on their employees and have actually fired them over posts they made.
What about location-based social networking sites, such as foursquare.com, a place where you broadcast your exact location to the users? These are dangerous because anyone on your list could easily be waiting for you to post about how you are enjoying your holiday abroad, and then know for sure that your house is empty and have a map directly to your front door.
IS FACEBOOK EVIL?
Facebook came under fire recently after it made changes to its privacy settings. Users must now explicitly opt out if they wish for their information to be kept private, by default making most Facebook users’ information public and sharing lots of it with third-party Web sites.
Your Facebook account can become much more private if you sift through the overly complex privacy settings and spend a good amount of time tweaking your profile. There are more than 50 different privacy buttons which require choosing from a total of more than 170 options. Even after this some information remains public, so the best way to limit access is to simply delete the information from Facebook.
It’s clear that Facebook doesn’t want you to have your profile set to private, and there is something awry when you consider that the US Constitution is more than a thousand words shorter than Facebook’s privacy policy. Why? The core business model of social networking sites is to collect data from users and monetize it. Currently the largest chunk of revenue comes from supplying advertising based on this data, but in the future who knows how this data could be used. This is why Facebook wants your information public: to bring more people to the site, to provide more relevant advertising, and to make money from this advertising.
Shocking? Not particularly. If Facebook wants to share my film and music preferences with advertising companies, that’s fine. If they wish to show relevant adverts to me, great. This is what Amazon, Google, YouTube and Yahoo started doing years ago. But the more Facebook tweaks its default settings to make previously private information public, the more users are closing down their accounts, something which has become known as “Facebook suicide.”
One possible solution is to force large sites to add a button to their privacy sections that would say “What do you know about me?” and allow users to easily view and edit everything the site knows about them. But if the past is anything to go by, there will be a new privacy heretic next month for us to worry about, and Facebook will continue its practices in relative peace. If not, you can always commit Facebook suicide.
Gareth Murfin is a freelance mobile developer
www.garethmurfin.co.uk
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