Prying into Privacy

WEEK 5: Analyse critically the following statement by Mark Zuckerberg while comparing it to privacy issues raised by online social networking collaborative practices

Facebook is undeniably the leading social network of our generation. The hugely successful creator and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, comments on Facebook’s privacy settings after much controversy over the introduction of its’ revised privacy settings.

Here is what he had to say…

“When people have control over want they share, they’re comfortable sharing more. When people share more, the world becomes more open and connected. And in a more open world many of the biggest problems we face together will become easier to solve”

Zuckerberg makes the somewhat naïve assumption, that when we have control over what we are displaying, people will be more willing to share. However is this really the case? Perhaps not.. If it has become simpler to operate our privacy settings, then who’s to say that we won’t relish in this convenience and shy away from being exposed to an even greater public domain?

Since its launch in 2004, Facebook has exploded and become our generations leading social network. It is a domain that promotes the sharing of public information via photos, invitations and other interactions. Yet with this new era of communication via increased sharing, comes many risks and issues over a lack of privacy. The main issues revolve around the release of personal information, such as dates of birth, telephone numbers, addresses and many others.

Concerns have been circulating the media for a while in regards to people’s carelessness with dispersing personal information. Sophos undertook an experiement whereby she sent out 200 friend requests via Facebook to strangers, in order to investigate the response of dispersing personal information to unknown people (Messmer 2007). She discovered that in majority of the cases, access was given to respondents’ photos of family and friends, plus personal interests and dislikes. In one case a respondent even gave out their mothers maiden name- a common response to personal identification questions for financial accounts.

This accidental leaking of personal information is more comman than you think. Robert McMillan from PCWorld echoes this concern.Identity theft nowadays is no longer just restricted to credit cards, but is becoming an increasing problem in social networks due to low privacy settings. Supposedly, a hacker going by the name of ‘Kirllos’ has offered up over 1.5 million Facebook user accounts for sale. These accusations haven’t been confirmed or denied by Facebook but nonetheless, this shows a great problem in having low privacy settings in social networks. Therefore anyone with a distinctive name should be at risk, but then again, isn’t that everyone? (Wise,2010)

Unfortunately this isn’t the only issue. Over time, the revised default privacy settings have been altered to enhance the collaborative medium, often affecting Facebook users due to no prior warning of change. However, these changes have had an effect on users as “default settings matter, because research has shown that people rarely change them” (Boyd; Hargitaai, 2010).

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Facebook has always provided sufficient privacy settings, however the difficulty for users to access or alter these privacy settings has come under scrutiny. People generally do not take the time of day to renegotiate the terms of their privacy settings if it will take a copious amount of time and effort.

Whilst Facebook’s privacy settings have changed over time, it could in fact be, that complexity in the activation of high privacy settings was indeed a purposeful move on behalf of Facebook, promoting the notion of ‘sharing’ whilst disregarding any problems this could have. I believe privacy controls should be simpler and easy to understand. Yes, people have the opportunity to change these settings, however many people need to be educated on the ramifications of overexposing themselves on these social networks.

Ultimately, whilst Zuckerberg’s depiction of this utopian world appears seemingly noble and idealistic, I believe he sounds quite ignorant and ill-informed. I think that when people have the power to control what they share they will in fact choose the latter, and share less.

MY REFERENCES:

Boyd, Danah; Ellison, Nicole, ‘Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship’, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, Volume 13, Issue 1, October 2007, pp. 210-230

McMillian, Robert. April 23, 2010, “15 million stolen facebook ids up for sale”<http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/194843/15_million_stolen_facebook_ids_up_for_sale.html>

Messmer, Ellen Aug 14, 2007 “Study: Facebook users easy targets for identity theft”<http://www.macworld.com/article/59488/2007/08/facebook.html>

Wise, Barry. April 23, 2010, “Social media identity theft hits facebook stolen identities up for sale” <http://knowem.com/blog/2010/04/23/social-media-identity-theft-hits-facebook-stolen-identities-up-for-sale/>