According to ABC News (2010), Facebook has acknowledged that their application has been transmitting consumer’s information to some advertising companies. The admission succeeds on the US newspaper, the Wall Street Journal exposed that the company was violating its privacy policies. However, most of the popular application was providing admission to Facebook member’s name and sometime their friend’s name to built a detailed database on people in order to track them when their online.
Source: ABC News.com 2010.
Facebook has acknowledged violating its privacy policy.
From my point of view, Facebook has not provided any privacy at all for its users. For instance, while you are sitting on the bar with a bunch of friends then your friend took a picture of you, and then you feel that your privacy will be violated. Besides, by logging in to your Facebook account you are actually opening yourself and your information to the world. Moreover, every single movement that we do on Facebook can be trace by others.
However, according to Debatin (2009), 74% of the users are conscious of the privacy options in Facebook, only 62% of them are actually using it. At the same time, users willingly post huge amounts of personal and private information, 70% posted demographic data, such as age, location, gender, their interests and demonstrate disregard for both the privacy settings and Facebook’s privacy policy and terms of service. Likewise, 89% acknowledge that they had never read the privacy policy and 91% were not familiar with the terms of service. This neglect to understand Facebook’s privacy policies and terms of service is widespread.
Source: Debatin's research paper 2009.
The Facebook Iceberg Model (Iceberg image © Ralph A. Clevenger/CORBIS).
Limit profile visibility to ‘‘friends only’’ simply means limiting it within the visible part of the iceberg. As long as users feed the invisible part of the iceberg with extensive personal data that they update voluntarily and continually, their privacy is at risk.
According to Shiels (2010), 300 questions from different readers raised and whittled down to proof that a growing number of consumers are worried and confused about how their personal information was being treated by the world’s biggest social network.
To be safe on Facebook please check some advice which BBC website has provided.
Click here
Facebook’s chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has announced wide-ranging changes to the user settings, in response to disparagement from consumer, commentators and regulators BBC news (2010). This is for preventing games from accessing consumer’s private information and all third parties applications.
In short, Debatin (2009) points out that, most of the online social networking users, their concerns shows that the gratification of using Facebook tend to be more important than the perceived threats to privacy.
References
ABC News 2010, ‘Facebook Admits Privacy Breach,’ updated on 19th October 2010, viewed on 12th November 2010, <http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/10/19/3042594.htm>
Shiels, M 2010, ‘Crisis Meeting for Fcebook,’ updated on 13th May 2010, viewed on 12th November 2010, <http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/maggieshiels/2010/05/crisis_meeting_for_facebook.html>
Debatin, B & Lovejoy, J.P 2009, ‘Facebook and Online Privacy: Attitudes, Behaviors, and Unintended Consequences,’ Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, vol.15, no.1, pp.83-108.
BBC News 2010, ‘Q&A: Facebook Privacy Changes,’ on 26th May 2010, viewed on 12th November 2010, <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10165573>
