facebook privacy controversies, AGAIN!

Following the news of facebook users reaching 500 million, it is now said that the personal details about 100 million facebook users have been collected and published by an intelligence agent.

This guy has used a code to collect the profile information of these users who have chosen the improper customizations for their information. This has resulted in their information being disclosed to public.

The publisher claims that his reason for publishing this information is to attract public attention to “privacy issues” more than before. At the same time, facebook claims that the publication of this information is not a disclosure of personal information, since the users themselves had made them available to public.

The internet file of this information is widely distributed in the internet. The list of these files has been downloaded and shared by more than 1000 people in www.thepiratebay.org, which is one of the biggest file sharing websites.

Every time a criticism like this is attacking facebook, it claims that they are the users themselves who put their information accessible to others. But there are still many experts accusing facebook of trying to make people be more open on their privacy options, which they think is not acceptable.

It seems that the facebook team is intentionally ignoring the negative aspect of their privacy policies. Many experts believe that the privacy policies of facebook difficult and sophisticated and not straight-forward. Facebook claims people are the ultimate owners of the information and they can decide what to share with whom!

The privacy issue with the facebook is that many users have not yet understood the privacy policies of facebook which has resulted in cases like this.

Although it has been claimed that the problems have been solved with the new privacy settings, but some information (e.g. profile picture, gender) are disclosed anyway, unless you remove them!

While I was reading these news about privacy policy of facebook, I thought why not quit?!

Check this website out : www.quitfacebook.com

In the next notes, I’m going to talk more about it. Meanwhile, you take that into consideration! ;)

starting with the privacy issue!

By posting this first note, I’m officially starting my blog in which I’m going to focus on the privacy issues on the internet. J

The privacy concept, being simple in name, is one of the most important issues, which has gained the most attention from internet users, servers, website designers and etc. There has been many cases of controversial law suits and cases in the recent years.

In the first notes, I am going to focus on the privacy issues which have to be considered when we are using social networking web sites, in which we put many of our personal information and we may share our most sincere feelings or experiences.

There are many articles, advertisements and clips which try to educate people on learning and caring about the privacy policies of each web site, but still there are many people who are not yet aware of what is best and most important for them to do, in order to protect their own information, and intellectual properties.

As a marketing student, I know that the information which people put on a website like facebook is widely used by marketers for the purpose of targeting their customers. Many of the users personal information is being sold to many marketing firms. The information may be delivered anonymously, but yet it is the right if the user to decide whether he/she wants the data to be transferred for the marketing purposes or not.

Many of us, unintentionally had given this right to facebook when we first created an account, by agreeing the terms of use. The terms which can never be reconsidered and even when we terminate our account, the information is still kept there. Namely it is said that the reason is to enable the user to retrieve the account in case of reactivating, but the truth is that the data is kept in the facebook’s database which can be used and retrieved anytime by data mining.

These are the most primary issues and points. In the following notes, I will try to discuss each and any noticeable point in detail.

 For the time being, I just recommend you watch this link.

http://www.albumoftheday.com/facebook/

This is quite scary, you can never deny. And it shows how important the information, on a website like facebook can be. We should take into consideration that while we look at facebook as a lovely site for reuniting with friends or having so much fun browsing various pages or playing funny games, it is our information being used and monitored by many other firms and organizations for business, security or intelligence services; things that may not ever have crossed our minds!!!