Social Network Sites privacy a case study of Facebook

Preface , literature review

Introduction
social network sites (SNS) being a part of social people life, it reflects peoples physical activities in network sites. Social network sites are a network applications and services which facilitate collective actions and sharing information such as: Facebook, Tagged, Twitter, etc. SNS members are increasing rapidly due to the development of peoples environment and social life. As a result researchers interest increased as well to study the impact of these sites on individuals life, particularly in the privacy aspect, and the consequences of sharing personal information. Recently, Facebook is criticised more than before in the aspect of the privacy of people s information (Nov, Wattal 2009). Although the internet privacy has a wide interest to research, social consequences has not had enough interest if we take in account that the information shared in Facebook are not just for Facebook, it is shared and u sed sometimes by members of its online community, consequently, the usage of these information depends on other members behavio ur which affects peoples privacy concern. the Internet User Information Privacy Concerns (IUIPC) suggests that people s worries are increasing regarding to their online privacy (Malhotra et al 2004). The evidence shows that users of the internet society are not likely to share their private information online, while some of them do share when they know that their benefits are more valuable that the information they provide . As general, they argue that the (IUIPC) are effected by external factors like Culture. As a result, internet privacy concerns effected community privacy concerns (Nov, Wattal 2009).

Sharing information
Sharing information between members of a community could be the major reason of attending (SNSs) but research shows that sharing infor mation affected with many factors such as: Firstly, the period of tenure in an online community, thus, as long as a membership last longer, a member tend to share more information and update his profile,( Brown and Duguid). Secondly, personal privacy, which increased by time and become more important

for a person who use (SNSs) For example: when a person add a friend to his Facebook he shares him photos and contact information but Facebook beacon allowed friends of friends to know a member s updated. However, sharing these information could be control through settings which allow users to adjust sharing their information to be appeared to everybody, friend of friends or just to friends. And finally, the network position of a member, a network position measured according to his or her centrality which is the number of direct ties in a given node (Freeman 1979). It has been asserted that a member s centrality is positively related to his or her ability to share information wit h other members, therefore, as much as a person able to share information he is more central, which is consequently increase others access to a member s information which increases the uncertainty of the information shared on the website as well as the p eople who get access to the information which encourage people to restrict sharing their information with others(Wasko and Faraj 2005).

Revelation of Facebook information and the consequences on university students

(Lampe et al 2006) asserted that Facebook is massively used by university students, 70 per cent of students whom questioned declared that they spend more than thirty minutes a day on Facebook and 21 per cent spend more than an hour on the site. It also has been revealed that Facebook users tend to show their personal information. For example, 82 per cent of Facebook users provide their personal details such as date of birth , gender, marital status, political views and cell phone(Gross and Acquisti 2005). Students believe that making their membership useful need to show their personal infor mation, therefore, finding a friend or a class mate is easier if his personal details appear on his profile, otherwise a member need to categorize his search many times using the options of Location, Education and Workplace. The previous results lead to the first assumption: The more using Facebook, the more information shared between users. A new member wants to attend Facebook need to sign up, and to sign up he a new member need to reveal his personal information. Members with three hundred users or more are more likely to show their personal details such as their preferable music (82.9 per cent compared to 64 per cent), favourite clubs(81 per cent compared to 51.5 per cent), interests (85.3 per cent co mpare to 64.1) than users who got less friends(Jones and Soltren 2005) which means that people who have got more details on their profile are easier to find by other users. Hence, the previous facts lead to the second assumption: the number of friends on u ser s profile related to the amount of personal information revealed. According to Pew study which made in 2000, 61 per cent of users who hided their personal details on the internet concern themselves as Privacy Defenders , those users believe that their personal data are not safe on the internet and it is used by businesses to collect information, Meanwhile, users who less concern about their personal information more likely to divulge their own information (Young and Quan- Haase 2009). Moreover, (Viseu et al. 2004) argue that people who just worry about their personal information when it abused likely to gain greater value of using the internet t han users who

restrict sharing their personal information. Further, if a user does not think that his information are threatened, he is likely to disclose it. Based on that, the third assumption is: members concerns about their privacy have low levels to share personal information. People are worried about their p rivacy, that concern increases clearly online. Fox et al (2000) found that the majority of the internet users are worried about their privacy in two aspects: first, obtaining their data by hackers and finding a personal information about them by unwanted audiences. Acquisti and Gross (2006) asserted that students are highly concerned about their personal information such as: sexual orientation or political views to be obtained by unwanted audiences. Tufekci (2008) confirmed that students demonstrate real concerns when they use their real names. As a result the previous findings lead the fourth assumption that the more information revealed about a user, the more concerned he is about unwanted audiences. Young and Quan- Haase (2009) suggested information revelation as a method to examine profile privacy , that means as much as students reveal information on their Facebook, they tend to restrict accessibility to their profiles. SNSs met this need for users by offering many levels of privacy, for example: Facebook settings include four levels of privacy all networks and all friends , some networks and all friends , friends of friends and only friends . as a result Young and Quan- Haase (2009) suggested the fifth assumption that profile privacy positively associated with the information revealed. In order to protect their profiles, members of SNSs recurrently use false information regarding to their date of birth, or current city and also they restrict the visibility of their profile to be accessed with th eir friends only (Tufekci 2008). On the other hand, Gross and Acquisti (2005) argue that users rarely tend to improve false personal information and they are unlikely inclined to change their privacy settings.

User s privacy on Facebook

Young and Quan- Haase (2009) asserted many strategies implemented by students to protect their information such as: y y y Exclude personal information of their profile. Use the private email feature to contact with members instead of posting on a friend s wall. Use a website s settings to restrict access of unwanted members of an SNS. For example: a member able in Facebook to un -tag himself of unwanted pictures, therefore, if a friend tag another member on a picture, the latter can un -tag himself if he does not want others to see that picture in his album. Moreover Facebook provide the limited profile feature that allowed a member to list some of his friends in a separate list and then to adjust the accessibility of the list s members to his information.

Use of limited profile allows a member to manage what to show to others in Facebook profile, consequently if a member concern about some information or pictures on Facebook wall , he can categorize underage members in a separate list and then to adjust their access to his profile. The previous assumptions about Facebook and the strategies used by students to protect their own profiles lead us to discuss one of the most controversial facilities of Facebook which is Facebook Beacon and its role in people s online society.

Facebook usage of members information

Facebook beacon is a service launched by Facebook website in November 2007 enables members to share their online activities with their friends as a news feeds or social adds. It might be argued that this initiative allow people to share their activities with their friends including purchasing, it allow websites (like Fandago and blockbuster) to send details about customers who visited these websites to Facebook, which will be then displays to a member s friends. While that was stated in Facebook policy, customers complained when they discovered what Facebook practice with the other websites visited by Facebook members. The argument raised is the right of Facebook to use customers information to share with a third party. The service ended due to customer complains in September 2009 (Tavani 2009). But the question members still ask that: does Facebook sell or share customers information to another affiliates or for marketing purposes?. Appendix (1) shows the Facebook iceberg model . the model displays the visible part of the iceberg which represent 1/8 of the overall usage of members information. The visible part shows a social networking and interactions between members .Meanwhile, the invisible part of the iceberg cont ents of a massive warehouse built by a voluntarily data aggregation and members activities used for commercial and marketing. Facebook was criticised of abusing its members privacy more than once, the watchdog organization Privacy International ranked Facebook in2007 the second in the bottom just before Google. This ranking mainly based on the unauthorised usage of customers data and transfer it to another companies also the managers of Facebook admitted recently that it use members information to be transferred for other allies for advertisements and marketing purposes (ABC 2010). Facebook profiles could be downloaded by a regular user using a simple algorithm because the website used predictable URL s for its pages. In addition, Facebook used other sources to collect infor mation about its members automatically unless a member opt out. Facebook asserted that the opt out facility in no more active but the data aggregation still utilized by Facebook(Debatin et al 2009). Further criticism about Facebook is allowing third parties to mining Facebook data warehouse including the access to a sensitive personal information which might be used by a thief to know members Social security number for American community (which contents of a five digit postcode, gender and date of birth) through the information of users which

appear for 50 % of Facebook users(Gross and Acquisti 2005). A group of researchers in Indiana University launched in 2005 a phishing experiment in order to collect information about students friends such as personal information , interests and activities , surprisingly the success result was 72 per cent, the same results appeared by similar experiments held by another groups. The previous results blow the whistle to maintain the gaps in social network sites which caused a lower guard for users activities and publicising people s privacy (Debatin et al 2009). Facebook also connected with search engines, so if someone typed a user s name in Google s search engine the result will be connected with the persons profile in Facebook as appears in Appendix (2) which allows the searcher to collect the user personal information, his friends, favourites etc. Unless the u ser stop this feature through the settings .

Conclusions and Recommendations

Social network sites are now a part of people s life which spread massively over the last years. Facebook is the largest online community with a huge data warehouse and filtere d information about members. Although the wide research about online communities, there is a remarkable shortage in researching the social effects of online communities, through this report the Facebook Iceberg Model Has been criticised elaboration the visible and invisible part of the iceberg and the utilization of peoples information by the Facebook management, allies companies and the third party which lead to the following recommendations: y y Increase public awareness by organising workshops explaining the treats of revealing personal information. Encourage the highest utilities of Facebook to protect user s information. Steinfield and Lamp (2007) noted that only 13 per cent of Michigan University profiles use the choice friends only to prevent their personal information from the unwanted people. More over the word friend is vary from person to another and from real community to the online community, thus a user could accept a college in work as a friend while he is not a real friend and the formal person does not know much about the new friend and as a result the personal information will be at a risk. Organise a petition between Facebook users to force Facebook management to review its policy in point of view of collecting information about its members and transfer it to a third party . as the protest group formed in 2006 including 700,000 person to inform Facebook to stop the news feeds called students against Facebook news feed which later force Facebook to modify the feature by users to chose what to display and to who(Romano 2006).

Encourage parents role on children online societies. 65 % of parents observing their kids profiles on social network societies. Applying a kind of monitor y help parent to avoid unwanted materials to be posted on kids profiles.

Bibliography
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Appendixes Appendix (1) shows Facebook Iceberg Model (Iceberg Model Image Ralph A. Clevenger / CORBIS )

Appendix (2) a Facebook member s profile has been accessed :

(image source: http://danielfive.com/facebook-design-sucks-facebook-users-facebook/)