Facebook is the biggest social network service in the world. I really like it because it helps me to keep in touch with people. Since we don’t have much time to meet up with all our friends and it’s so annoying to ring a friend very often, leave a wall post or comment on our friend’s facebook is the easiest way to show our concern and care. I do make new contacts and talk to strangers in facebook sometimes when I am too boring at home. I don’t think it is that dangerous as I won’t reveal all my personal information. It is only some chit-chat and I can defriend them anytime if I don’t feel like to keep them in my list.
Recently, more and more of my friends starting to concern about their privacy. Some of them hide their wall post, some of them hide their tagged photos, some of them forbid people to leave comments, and some of them restrict strangers to add them as friends.
Sophos, the world's most secure antivirus firm, had conducted a research of facebook users. They found that 46% of Facebook users accepted friend requests from strangers. 89% of users in their 20s divulged their full birthday. Nearly 100% of users post their email address. Between 30-40% of users list data about their family and friends They had also conducted an experiment in 2007 to see how Facebook users aware of their privacy by opening fake facebook accounts. The result showed 41% of users divulged their sensitive personal information to a complete stranger. http://www.sophos.com/security/topic/facebook.html
I think full birthday is not really private information. I am happy if my friends (or boyfriends) put their full birthday on Facebook because I can’t remember all of their birthdays. It’s like a reminder for me. For email address, I think it’s fine too. Some people hide their page but they still keep their email address public. Sending emails is probably the easiest, indirect and ‘not- too- odd’ way for people in different relationships and in different places to contact each other. For people who put their real phone/pager numbers, I still don’t think they lack privacy-savvy as they made the choice to be willing to publish their personal information for knowing/flirting with more strangers.
There is no way to fully protect our privacy once we started to use internet. Not only when we signed up Facebook the data is transmitted to other tracking companies, but also when we play or use the Facebook apps. According to an investigation by Wall Street Journal in Oct 2010, all of the top ten most popular apps on Facebook like Farmville, frontier ville , zynga, etc. send users account data to at least 25 advertising and data companies, some even create a file about users to track their online activity. Most of these apps are created and released by independent software development companies. ( http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304772804575558484075236968.html )
It is quite surprising to know this. However, if you think deeply, many things we do in real life is also providing a chance for advertising companies to track us. For instant when we open a bank account, the bank have all our personal information which they can sell their insurance scheme or other banking services to us. When we sign up as a VIP member in cosmetic shops, they might also transmit our personal data to other beauty shops. Advertisements is out of control today, but this is the only way to make money for some companies like Facebook. Like what Rodney has said in class, as long as the benefits I get outweight the cost I pay for using facebook, I don’t mind they take my personal information for money to run this social network service.
Thank you for sharing the research about Facebook, this makes me more aware about the privacy issues in Facebook. I think that there is no ways to completely protect our personal information as you say. Companies can make so much money by selling our personal information. I always receive phone calls from different companies. I don’t think I used their service before! I’m one of the victims of tracking!
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