As many college students and people all over the world know, Facebook has become the largest online social networking website over the past five years. We have seen it grow from merely a college networking website to a global connection source. However, as Facebook has grown to an astonishing 350 million users, the privacy standards have somewhat diminished due to the consistent growth and additions Facebook has made over the past five years. While it is no fault of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg that the privacy standards been somewhat impaired, there are significant problems that have arisen in the privacy department as Facebook has grown in users. As stated in the open letter from Mark Zuckerberg on December 1, 2009,
"Starting with the very first version of Facebook five years ago, we've built tools that help you control what you share with which individuals and groups of people. Our work to improve privacy continues today."
As we have seen through this class, many information that we share online is subject to identity theft and online criminals around the globe. It has become such a complex situation that now people across the world can access information on any single person and use it to purchase and steal merchandise as well as money. The internet while very valuable and useful has also aided to one of the largest criminal acts in a very long time. Facebook has contributed to networking and is a social utility that is great for maintaining relationships throughout our nation and across the world. However, with the original setup of allowing people to access information and material through accessing a specific network, such as a school, country, or even a company, our privacy in many ways has been compromised. For this reason, Mark Zuckerberg has tried to develop a new way that Facebook will allow users to connect.
In his letter on December 1, 2009, Zuckerberg stated that he will remove the regional“networks” as he called them (which basically is countries and cities that can be used to join Facebook), stating that over 50% of all users use area networks to access material of other people, making it a complicated and difficult practice to implement privacy controls. He stated, “The plan we've come up with is to remove regional networks completely and create a simpler model for privacy control where you can set content to be available to only your friends, friends of your friends, or everyone.” This makes the privacy controls simpler and easier to maintain by the 350 million users, and will prevent people who are not granted access to uploaded and posted material by users within that network.
These new privacy controls will allow Facebook users to maintain a certain aspect of privacy while allowing them to share what they want with whomever they want. While these controls seem to be the answer to keeping the integrity of profiles on Facebook, we know that somewhere along the line privacy will always be an issue in the online community and the safest way to maintain privacy is to abstain from posting anything not wanted on that specific website.
Source:
Posts
Removing the "network" category would hopefully help protect the privacy of the 350 million Facebook users; however, there is other information on Facebook that is more personal than the network in which one is located. For example, most Facebook users list what city and state they are from. Also, most individuals use their first and last names, list their siblings' names, birthdate, e-mail address, and other contact information. Unfortunately, I believe removing the "network" tab would do little to no good for personal privacy. Individuals still post information that is just as personal as the network in which they belong to.
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion, I believe Facebook should go back to its earlier, less complicated layout. Users posted less personal information and were not involved with any of the applications that now flood Facebook pages. Also, I think Facebook was much safer when only certain people (high school students, college students, etc.) were allowed to create an account. Now that anyone can create a Facebook account, it is a much more dangerous social networking site.
I get worried every time facebook changes (which seems to be very frequently these days). It seemed like the site stayed virtually the same from 2006-2008, and now there seems to be a new version every 6 months.
ReplyDeleteEvery time facebook changes, I have to double check all security settings, as I just did today. It is scary that the default settings offer the lowest possible security.
The point is, dont post anything that you would want anyone in the world to see. These privacy settings are the equavalent to a chainlink fence: weak and easy to see through.