Stay Tuned! 

So far I tried to discuss the issues and real cases that happened in the cyber space regarding the privacy issues, with the focus on the social networks. With these last two notes, I tried the wrap up the discussion by reviewing the general issues and concerns.  I will stop the discussion of privacy issues in the social networks for the time being.

In the next blogs we will focus on the Malaysia’s Personal Data Protection Act 2010.

 Thanks for keeping up…

Information as Goods

The Warn Test foundation convicts the social networks of trading people’s private information.

The foundation claims that in many cases the usernames and passwords are easily manipulated, which mean it is possible to reach a persons’ website and personal account with few technical steps.

Social networks are so enthusiastic in gathering more and more information from their users. These networks give free services and rely heavily on advertisings to gain financial profits.

The more information they “sell”, the more customer and profit they have.

The networks with higher number of users charge more for advertisings and increase their revenues.

Warn Test says that the networks which are less famous, act more responsibly in gathering and protecting private information. Their activities are not so wide-spread and as a result they have less commercial customers.

Warn Test foundation warns the social network users that they are the only ones who can really protect their privacy, because once you give it to the web, you can never claim it back.

And in so many cases even if you understand that they had used your private information, you can never sue them for breaching the contract based on the click-wrap issue! 

Warn Test Reports

The Warn Test research foundation in Germany convicts the social networks of being unreliable in keeping the privacy of their users.

The legal and technical specialists at Warn Test said in a report that all of the 10 social networks under investigation proved many major defects in protecting the private information of their users. This information includes the photos or personal notes. According to the Warn Test foundation giving this information to companies and commercial brokers is violation of EU rules and regulations.

According to law, internet companies which receive and save private information should be diligent in keeping them from third parties. The users’ private information should not be considered as the companies assets.

Warn Test claims that Facebook alone has violated the EU law in 15 cases. Facebook with more than 500million users is the least trusted website in protecting the privacy of its users. Other networks like LinkedIn and MySpace also show important defects. The Facebook users at the point of sign up usually give the website permission to use the information globally in their network or account.

Recently a Facebook manager who wanted to remain anonymous claimed that the information removed by the users, only disappears from their sight and remains in the main safe box of the network.

According to Warn Test this is a clear violation of users’ rights and wills, because the network neglects their right to have control over their private information.

Warn Test reports that even the people who are not direct users of social networks are in danger, since the network will gather information about them through their friends and relatives.

This makes the legal control over privacy even harder, since everything is done without you being aware of it!

Have you noticed the new Facebook update?! “Facebook places”

Recently Facebook has added a new update feature to its setting which has worried the privacy supporters and the security specialists.

The Facebook team has activated a new feature on its website called “facebook places” which enables the users on the move to declare their location wherever they are with the use of their notebook or their phone.

Privacy supporters claim that this feature creates many security problems. An example could be that when a user declares he is in a place other than his hometown, he has practically given the chance to the robbers to empty his house!

Although the Facebook managers claim that they had designed this system with so much attention and accuracy, the specialists say the accuracy is not to the point that prevents the probable abuses.

It is recommended to put this option “disabled”.

It is especially so important for politically active Iranians. The authorities may be able to track you down even if you are using Facebook under an unreal name. Double check and remind it to your friend as well.

A simple privacy issue turned into a birthday disaster!

Many specialists claim that Facebook privacy settings are so complex and misleading. With all this criticism, Facebook team still claims that the settings are straightforward and designed to best serve the peoples’ need for privacy and socializing at the same time.

A contrary example to these claims happened recently when a 14year old girl of Hertfordshire in  England was planning on inviting her friends to her birthday using Facebook, but she forgot to uncheck  the little box next to the “anyone can view and RSVP” before clicking the “create event” button.

What happened?! She got more replies that she could ever expect! With the news spreading all around the internet and creating worries for her and her family and friends, Facebook took down her event page. It was late since many of the Facebook users had already created their own fan pages trying to put her party in the history! Many random users had decided to attend her party and were asking for directions… Imagine that!!!

Instead of being happy of an exceptional party in the history, the girl and the family-being so worried- canceled the party and even called the police to step up their patrols in case of a swarm of Facebook pranksters show up.

The Telegraph say in its reports dedicated to “Facebook party crashers” that the same thing had also happened before with more than 50 gatecrashers at a birthday party in Liverpool and also another case with 100 revelers.

Earlier this year, a small birthday party in Austrailia also got 60,000 RSVPs on Twitter.

Anyway, the moral of the story?! Again and again… check the privacy settings of your social networking accounts before it puts you in a trouble like this. Next time you try to create an event; don’t forget to customize the privacy settings before posting. And remember that if your friend list includes hundreds of guys you have hardly even met, don’t be surprised if you see a few extra faces at your party next time!

And finally, a note to Facebook: Shouldn't event invites be set to "private" by default?

No privacy, even at your back yard!

Fox news says: the River Head city municipality uses the Google Earth service to detect the houses with unauthorized swimming pools at their back yard!

The fox news website says in its report that people will no longer have privacy even at their back yards, since the authorities may be watching them using Google earth. J

This report says many of the city authorities use this program to monitor peoples’ houses and this is criticized strongly by the privacy supporters.

The city municipality has claimed that this is done to protect people from unsafe constructions and this is done by respecting the laws and regulations and using the internet which is the fastest, easiest and cheapest way.

Google Earth has also mentioned this and other similar stories in its weblog to inform the people about this issue, telling people that this can not be sued as a violation of privacy.

Another story of using Google Earth to enter peoples’ back yard privacy is the story of a man running a pool service company who used Google Earth to find houses with swimming pools to focus his advertising on them.

These internet services which often come to help of the users, some times can be offensive since they violate their privacy.

Protect your privacy against mobile fraud!

Many communication specialists warn that the mobile phones are the center of online swindlers' attention more than ever. in the previous post I discussed this issue in detail. 

Mark Ward from BBC news says in his report that the applications or programs which mobile phone users install on their devices can be a trap for stealing their private information. He also introduces some symptoms that every mobile phone owner needs to know to distinguish the threat of privacy and information theft. Some of them are:

The most obvious symptom could be that the battery of your phone is emptied so soon, for example you suddenly notice that your battery has become empty overnight. The reason is the phone has been busy sending the information via the theft applications overnight.

Another symptom is the unknown and strange phone numbers in your end-month outgoing calls list.   

By the way, the more the use of these devices extends, the more becomes the number of useful or at the same time theft programs which seriously threaten the privacy of their users.

Do not neglect privacy issues on your mobile phone!

In the 1980s when the mobile phones first came to the market, no one really expected them to be as popular as now. But today, they not only reached all corners of the world but also are used by people for shopping, transferring money, checking the bank account and many more. The personal and banking information of their users is the temptation for the swindlers. What these swindlers have noticed is that the phones are directly related to the life and money of people. Researches show that recently the phone robbery is done planned and organized carefully. The programs installed on the phone are useful to the owners and enable them to arrange and do many jobs easily. Yet, many of these programs are written by the swindlers who steal the owner’s important information beyond the attractive appearance of the program.

Internet fraud is so easy, and stealing people’s information from the phone is similar to what is done online.

The scary thing is that the format of the program is similar to any other simple program, but it can easily get to your addresses or the information in your messages.

So far the number of these dangerous programs is not so much but most probably they will increase. There are some symptoms for the phone owners to detect these programs on their phone. Later I will discuss them with you to keep you alert of the dangers to your privacy on your phone.

Google is protecting the privacy of its Gmail users

At the beginning of the year 2010, Google released the news about the vast attacks to its Gmail users, most of them were the Chinese human rights activists.

This raised many controversies about the Gmail privacy issues. The threats to these websites are so serious that they claim these attackers are so professional and high-level; they are certainly supported by a government service.

In USA, these attacks are considered to be an “alarm” which caused Google to defend the governmental supervision on its website. Since then the internet Hulk, Google has decided to sign a contract with the Intelligence Service of America to let them investigate the espionage attacks of a Chinese group.

The aim of this is to help Google better defend its users and their information from being attacked.

The main issue to discuss here is that Google has permitted this intelligence agency-which is the most powerful electronic investigation organization in the world- to use any important and sensitive information under one condition: no violation of Google policies of protecting privacy and online communications. Google has not given the permission to this organization to monitor the users’ searches or their email accounts.

The main goal of this project which most probably is impossible is not to find the people behind these attacks; but to find solutions to modify the Google defending system or what is professionally called the “information Security”.

Google claims: attacking the websites and networks and extracting the personal information of people, companies and private and government institutes leads to legal, security, economical and political losses and neglecting the modification of the system will result in regret.

about Quitfacebook.com

As I have promised before, in this blog I am going to discuss this website and the reasons related to privacy issues, behind the creation and the public support for it. You might be shocked when you first open it as u see the terms “creep”, “stalk”, “lurk”, “propagate” and “infect” instead of common facebook terms. Terms are being used to show the effect of private information being exposed to public.

This website is originally made to object against the facebook privacy settings and requires its users to quit facebook in objection to their personal information being exposed or abused.

A page has been created inside the facebook itself, asking the 500million people who can not help leaving facebook to try not to check their account only for one day!

The creator of this web site claims that he and his followers are not consent with the interaction of facebook with its users and believes it to be unethical.

Only one day after the creation of quitfacebook.com, it had more than 23,000 fans worldwide. This figure may be big enough to attract the attention of the facebook team or warn them. But this website was not successful in creating a great wave of quitting among the facebook users, as much as its creators expected.

Communications Specialists continually warn people that none of the social networking websites will guarantee you that when you quit that site; your account information will be secured.

The controversy has been so high that resulted in the anger of the members of the Parliament of US. Pressures are causing facebook to withdraw but still not enough to reduce the real threat to the privacy issues.

student committed suicide after his sex-video was released on the web!

I was browsing the web, searching for stuff regarding the privacy issues on the internet when I suddenly came across the news of an American student committing suicide after his homo-sex video was released on the web. (Source: www.BBC.co.uk)

This student had been seen jumping off the George Washington Bridge in the state of New Jersey on 22^nd September.

Tyler Clementi, was a 18-year-old student and violinist who had been filmed by two of his friends, while he was having sex with his same-sex partner.

His roommate and another friend of him are being convicted of filming him and then sharing it on the net. If the court pleads them guilty they will be sentenced to maximum 5years imprisonment.

The roommate tweeted on his tweeter page that his roommate (Tyler) has asked him to leave the room for him until midnight. He went to the room next-door and turned on the camera, filming Tyler with another guy!

Although this post and the film have been removed, the pictures are still available on Google.

This is again another issue about cybercrime relating to privacy! This time not the information on the web is being reached illegally or misused. But the person’s most intimate time has been captured and regardless of his privacy it has been shared on the web, visible to millions of people! Disgusting!

Facebook applications are threats to your privacy!

Recently facebook team has claimed that it will enable its users to control more on the information they disclose to third parties on this website, including the applications and games.

Currently, there are 950,000 application producers on facebook from 180 countries around the world.

These new facebook regulations require the application producers to inform the users about what personal information will they use and seek the users’ consent and permission. It has been revealed that until now, the application producers on facebook had had unlimited access to the personal information of their users. These modifications will enable the users to have more control over this issue.

Also, Facebook has been required by critics to encourage its users to choose their privacy levels carefully. The new instructions will also inform people about the difference between terminating and deactivating an account. These issues had been the sources of controversies for a long time.

There are many countries that are running researches about the use of facebook in their nations, in order to urge facebook to protect the privacy of their people. Such a research was started in Canada last year following the lawsuit against facebook by an institute in Ottawa University.

After this case, Canadian authorities did negotiations with the facebook people which resulted in the modifications applied to facebook for the 12 million Canadian users. If the same restrictions be applied to the similar websites, we may see much fewer cases of privacy violations on internet.