Privacy Issues On Social Networks
Nearly everyone is on some social networking site these days. While this is good in the sense that everyone can stay connected, there are some detrimental effects as well. People need to be better about delineating what is good information to post, and what is bad information to post. Teachers and their scandalous web pages consorting with students are all over headlines these days, and not in a good way. The problem may be the people for the most part and their indiscretion, but the companies may be at fault as well.
Recently, Canadians have had a bone to pick with social networking giant FaceBook. Although the website lays out all sorts of privacy guidelines and other protections to be granted towards the consumer, the Canadian Privacy Agency accuses them of being all talk. Canadians represent about twelve million of their two-hundred and fifty million users.
The investigation revealed that FaceBook’s security is not strong at all, and that their terms of service are unclear and vague. A major complaint among users is that it is easy to deactivate ones account, but hard to actually get it completely deleted. Some people believe that FaceBook hangs onto this information so that their behavioral advertisers who make them lots of money can still track and bombard the former users with tailor made ads.
FaceBook, MySpace, and many other social networking giants have always been under intense scrutiny as to privacy issues, and how they protect their clientele. Many of them come under fire form releasing to much information to third party companies and websites, such as the behavioral advertisers. They aren’t breaking any rules a lot of times though, as the terms of service most people blindly accept without reading pretty much throws out any Constitutional right the user may have enjoyed online.
FaceBook, mounted with a virtual angry mob against them, released a new privacy patch which is supposed to fix all of these issues, and they say that they will alter their terms of service to comply with people’s arguments that they are tearing the Constitution to shreds online. As far as privacy and people’s profiles goes, they released a guide on how to stay safe online and a patch that should prevent any holes from appearing in their “private” profile system. Sometimes hackers find ways to get around that, but the new patch is said to correct this.
Being such a public site, FaceBook has to maintain good public relations, because their business runs off of the people. If people began to fear that using their services would cause a privacy nightmare, it is likely FaceBook would lose its advertisers and go under. Although the may have had some P.R. related ulterior motives, FaceBook has corrected people’s complaints and done so without to much gripe. It just goes to show, if you need something or have a concern in the world of privacy, all you need to do is say something about it and these big players will bend over backwards for you. FaceBook has released statements apologizing for any inconvenience the problems caused, and will continue to look forward in the strength of their security.
