daphnemaia.sg » Blog Archive » There is no privacy on Facebook

Citizenship: World

There is no privacy on Facebook

2 September 2009 1 views 10 Comments

Just a couple of days ago I was having a rather interesting conversation with someone who posted some really rude and lewd comments (with no malicious intent, and indeed this person had meant it as a joke) on my Facebook wall. Instead of letting it sit there, I had deleted the comment and told him that I have colleagues, business contacts, and bosses, among my Facebook contacts, and that I’d like to have my profile remain as professional as possible, while trying not to compromise on my own personality in the process.

We then moved on to discussing his profile, which he insists is “private” and “locked”, and bosses and people outside his immediate social network (people he had granted access to, he said) would not have access to anything he has written on his own Facebook Wall, or on his photos, etc.

I’ve had several of these conversations with several people in the last few weeks, all of whom had insisted that Facebook, when locked, is completely private, and that is why they do not add colleagues, bosses, acquaintances, business contacts, etc., as they would like to maintain some semblance of privacy.

Now, that is extremely interesting, because yesterday, on Read Write Web, I saw the following article:

What Facebook Knows About You

The Northern California chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has put together a campaign to raise awareness of privacy issues surrounding Facebook applications, in particular quizzes. According to this group, the millions of Facebook users taking quizzes are revealing far more personal information to application developers than they are aware of. This is mostly due to the fact that Facebook’s default privacy settings allow access to all your profile information whether or not your profile is set to “private.” Even worse, the ACLU reports that even if you shun quizzes yourself, your profile info is revealed when one of your friends takes a quiz.

(Read the rest of the article)

I was curious, so I took ACLU’s quiz and yes, I risked all of your personal information (all 1,127 of you) to bring you this blog entry.

Here’s what the quiz showed me:

(Please click on the thumbnails for larger images)

While I am a huge advocate of building networks on Facebook and of users’ rights to privacy, I am not surprised with this news. So it really all just boils down to the fact that whatever you do on the internet, somebody out there is watching you. Nothing is private anymore.

As someone who works in the Social Media space, I was aware that Facebook quizzes are being used to collect data about users (what did you naively think those quizzes were for), but what I was not aware of was the extent to which this was being done. I have yet to create a Facebook application for work purposes, but the idea has definitely crossed my mind.

It will be interesting to see how Facebook deals with this, as more and more people become aware of what sort of user information Facebook passes on to application developer companies and their clients.

On Facebook’s end, they have protected their own interests by including this clause in an opt-in exercise before you add any application:

While Facebook insists that you can limit who has access to what information, and what kind of information applications are allowed to obtain from your profile by restricting access through Settings » Privacy Settings » Applications, many users may still not be aware of this issue or these options, and let’s face it, probably 9 out of 10 of you love doing Facebook quizzes in your free time.

Even if you don’t do quizzes, the article says that you are not exempt from this problem – quizzes and other applications can still obtain access to your information if your friends partake in these Facebook activities. For now, I suppose the only option would be to protect yourself by disallowing applications’ access to any of your information whatsoever, at Settings » Privacy Settings » Applications! Even so, do bear in mind:

If it is something your grandmother would frown upon, it probably should not be posted on any social networking site at all.

So do you still think Facebook is a safe and private haven for you to write and post whatever you want?

(No Ratings Yet)

Loading ...

10 Comments »

Melda said:

Ouch, okay, I won’t take more quizzes then… >.<

# 2 September 2009 at 2:12 pm

Zhen Kai said:

I’m sorry, but someone’s posting stuff on the WWW, and you expect privacy? get offline and get a life.

And another: you have to restrict yourself on the WWW and be uptight, reason being there are VIPs on your friend list? LOL.

# 2 September 2009 at 2:46 pm

daphnemaia said:

@Melda: there’s no point, because ur friends are going to continue. i think stopping quizzes isn’t going to solve the problem. also, what about when we use other apps, for example the SlideShare Facebook app, the LinkedIn app, the Twitter app, etc.? the problem is a lot worse than just the quizzes.

@Zhen Kai: Hello, thanks for your message. I understand where you are coming from, and I mentioned that there is no privacy – I expect that. But what I do NOT appreciate is for Facebook to pass on all of our information to vendors, who should by right have no such unrestricted and complete access.
I don’t think it’s a matter of being uptight or not, but rather, of not allowing situations where something might come back and bite me in the arse at another point in my life. It’s just like how some actresses start their careers by filming soft porn films, and later when they become big movie stars, their history in blue films come back to haunt them in the tabloids, etc. I’m sure you can understand that comparison well.

# 2 September 2009 at 3:30 pm

Mark said:

Something similar to what I wrote: “We’re not anonymous anymore, so lighten up!” at: http://theintelligentcrowd.com/kmblog/?p=8

# 2 September 2009 at 7:18 pm

Brad F. said:

This reminds me of a conversation I had about a week or so ago where I was telling my mom what was going on with all of her personal information while she was taking all of those quizzes. I still don’t think I managed to get the point across to her effectively. My wife and I have both changed those settings and gone through and manually removed all of the questionable apps we’d approved over time.

# 3 September 2009 at 4:16 am

Zhen Kai said:

Hah. everyone understands that comparison but it’s probably active imagination to compare your (or the general) situation to a third-rate soft-porn actor/actress being famous, but I wouldn’t know.

At any rate, if you don’t want to allow “situations where something might come back and bite me in the arse at another point in my life”, then the best way would be to not have 1)friends 2)a social media profile. Let’s face it, the things we do with friends, some stuff should remain offline. And even that doesn’t mean it definitely won’t come back to haunt us.

Love Mark’s article though. We all need to lighten up.

# 3 September 2009 at 4:41 pm

daphnemaia said:

i think everyone has a right to maintain their social media profiles the way they want it to be. i’d like mine to be professional yet personal.

all i’m saying is that Facebook should not be giving out information to third parties without giving us a clear disclosure. i have nothing to hide from anyone, so my social media profiles are all available for the world to see. nothing that i will consider a potential “haunt”.

like u said… some of the things we do with friends should remain offline – i agree with that. however some people don’t have that kind of intelligence to differentiate what should remain offline, and what should be posted on facebook.

cheers.

# 3 September 2009 at 6:37 pm

What Someone Should Tell Facebook about using People’s Data | bda - Buckingham Design Associates said:

[...] no secret that whenever you take part in a quiz or download an app you’re handing over your personal information, and that of your friends, to Facebook’s third party [...]

# 4 September 2009 at 5:04 pm

Fitness Fabulous said:

facebook is stalking us..!

# 21 September 2009 at 8:27 pm

MKL said:

That’s why I prefer Twitter over Facebook and I mostly hang out there. I like the free spirit-ness of Twitter and how fast things go. I never play quizzes or games anyway, so I’m safe

# 21 October 2009 at 10:03 pm