Facebook; To Share or Not To Share? You Decide!

What is a Facebook article doing in the pages of The Zuphorian? I shall endeavour to answer;

Update: Before reading this article which I wrote, well a while back, I would like if you could take the time to listen to a recording I found and was going to do a followup to this article with.

The Man Who Stood Up To Facebook.

Recently my youngest Daughter requested could she have a Facebook account, when I asked her why? her reply was, “All her friends are on Facebook”. Now, I myself have long since closed (deactivated) my Facebook account. I have issues with their privacy policies, and that was way before the privacy farce that they have in place now.

I know, this article would be very short if that was my only conclusion. With that in mind I decided to do a little research, and the results of my research I have tried to portray within this article.

A little history goes a long way;

Facebook is a social networking service and website launched in February 2004, operated and privately owned by Facebook Inc. As of February 2012, Facebook has more than 845 million active users. Users must register before using the site, after which they may create a personal profile, add other users as friends, and exchange messages, including automatic notifications when they update their profile.

Additionally, users may join common-interest user groups, organized by workplace, school or college, or other characteristics, and categorize their friends into lists such as “People From Work” or “Close Friends”. The name of the service stems from the colloquial name for the book given to students at the start of the academic year by some university administrations in the United States to help students get to know each other.

Facebook allows any users who declare themselves to be at least 13 years old to become registered users of the site.

Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg with his college roommates and fellow students Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes.The Web site’s membership was initially limited by the founders to Harvard students, but was expanded to other colleges in the Boston area, the Ivy League, and Stanford University.

It gradually added support for students at various other universities before opening to high school students, and eventually to anyone aged 13 and over. However, according to a May 2011 Consumer Reports survey, there are 7.5 million children under 13 with accounts and 5 million under 10, violating the site’s terms of service.

Amazing as it sounds to some people there are dozens, nay hundreds of other social network sites on the web which are dedicated to Tweens and Teens. And with almost 13 million users violating the terms of Facebook, I can’t help but ask myself how this can be? Sites such as; Habbo – Hi5 – Imbee – KidSocial all cater for tweens and teens in more ways than Facebook ever could. Come on parents, don’t you realize that Facebook not alone is selling all Your data and posts to advertising agencies, but now you’re allowing them to do the same to your children.

The Legality of it all;

The following is a direct quote from COPPA – {Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998}. The full act can be found HERE.

(1) IN GENERAL.—It is unlawful for an operator of a website or online service directed to children, or any operator that has actual knowledge that it is collecting personal information from a child, to collect personal information from a child in a manner that violates the regulations prescribed under subsection (b).

This act is in place to protect our children. Parents by, in essence lying on their children’s registration to Facebook are giving up their children’s right to this act. Now I would like to point out that this act pertains to the United States. In Europe such laws are covered under the Data Protection Directive. Recently The European Commission joined forces with technology firms including Apple, Facebook and Google to improve the protection of children online.

The coalition, which includes 28 companies, will develop an age-based online ratings system and aims to strengthen privacy settings. It also plans by the end of next year to make it easier to report inappropriate content.

Other measures include improving parental controls and enhancing cooperation among law enforcement and hotline authorities to remove online material showing sexual abuse.

In 1980, in an effort to create a comprehensive data protection system throughout Europe, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) issued its “Recommendations of the Council Concerning Guidelines Governing the Protection of Privacy and Trans-Border Flows of Personal Data.” The seven principles governing the OECD’s recommendations for protection of personal data were:

1. Notice—data subjects should be given notice when their data is being collected;
2. Purpose—data should only be used for the purpose stated and not for any other purposes;
3. Consent—data should not be disclosed without the data subject’s consent;
4. Security—collected data should be kept secure from any potential abuses;
5. Disclosure—data subjects should be informed as to who is collecting their data;
6. Access—data subjects should be allowed to access their data and make corrections to any inaccurate data; and
7. Accountability—data subjects should have a method available to them to hold data collectors accountable for following the above principles.

The OECD Guidelines, however, were nonbinding, and data privacy laws still varied widely across Europe. The US, meanwhile, while endorsing the OECD’s recommendations, did nothing to implement them within the United States. However, all seven principles were incorporated into the EU Directive.

Third countries is the term used in EU legislation to designate countries outside the European Union. Personal data may only be transferred to third countries if that country provides an adequate level of protection.

The Working Party negotiated with U.S. representatives about the protection of personal data, the Safe Harbor Principles were the result. According to critics the Safe Harbor Principles do not provide for an adequate level of protection, because they contain fewer obligations for the controller and allow the contractual waiver of certain rights.

In July 2007, a new, controversial, Passenger Name Record agreement between the US and the EU was undersigned.

In February 2008, Jonathan Faull, the head of the EU’s Commission of Home Affairs, complained about the US bilateral policy concerning the P.N.R. The US had signed in February 2008 a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the Czech Republic in exchange of a visa waiver scheme, without first consulting Brussels.

The tensions between Washington and Brussels are mainly caused by the lower level of data protection in the US, especially since foreigners do not benefit from the US Privacy Act of 1974. Other countries approached for bilateral Memoranda of Understandings included the United Kingdom, Estonia, Germany and Greece.

If you would like to read more on the above paragraph, there is an article on Wikipedia which discloses this in its entirety. You can find that article HERE. In the US The Federal Trade Commission, the nation’s consumer protection agency, is urging kids: Don’t post information about yourself online that you don’t want the whole world to know.

The Internet is the world’s biggest information exchange: many more people could see your information than you intend, including your parents, your teachers, your employer, the police — and strangers, some of whom could be dangerous.

They have a very in dept article entitled “Social Networking Sites: Safety Tips for Tweens and Teens”. You can find that article HERE, I would advise all parents no matter where you are in the world to read that article.

And so to Facebook, and it’s ever-increasing privacy issues;

Facebook has been dogged with controversies and privacy issues since, well almost its launch. There are a wide variety of blogs and articles across the internet on why you should not have a Facebook account. Like! (pardon the pun) eHow Tech’s Jason Spindle’s excellent article “Reasons Not to Have a Facebook Account” or Dan Yoder from Business Insider’s “10 Reasons To Delete Your Facebook Account“. Or the compiling article in Gizmodo entitled “Top Ten Reasons You Should Quit Facebook”.

This author is not going to add to the ever-increasing Blogs as to why you should not have a Facebook account. Instead, I will show facts obtained thru Wikipedia on the reasons why I don’t have an online Facebook account and let you be the judge.

In August 2007, the code used to generate Facebook’s home and search page as visitors browse the site was accidentally made public, according to leading internet news sites. A configuration problem on a Facebook server caused the PHP code to be displayed instead of the web page the code should have created, raising concerns about how secure private data on the site was. A visitor to the site copied, published and later removed the code from his web forum, claiming he had been served legal notice by Facebook.

In November, Facebook launched Beacon, a system (discontinued in September 2009) where third-party websites could include a script by Facebook on their sites, and use it to send information about the actions of Facebook users on their site to Facebook, prompting serious privacy concerns. Information such as purchases made and games played were published in the user’s news feed.

On September 5, 2006, Facebook introduced two new features called “News Feed” and “Mini-Feed”. The first of the new features, News Feed, appears on every Facebook member’s home page, displaying recent Facebook activities of the member’s friends. The second feature, Mini-Feed, keeps a log of similar events on each member’s profile page.Members can manually delete items from their Mini-Feeds if they wish to do so, and through privacy settings can control what is actually published in their respective Mini-Feeds.

Government authorities rely on Facebook to investigate crimes and obtain evidence to help establish a crime, provide location information, establish motives, prove and disprove alibis, and reveal communications. Federal, state, and local investigations have not been restricted to profiles that are publicly available or willingly provided to the government; Facebook has willingly provided information in response to government subpoenas or requests, except with regard to private, unopened inbox messages less than 181 days old, which require a warrant and a finding of probable cause under federal law.

The Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC), per Director Phillipa Lawson, filed a 35-page complaint with the Office of the Privacy Commissioner against Facebook on May 31, 2008, based on 22 breaches of the Canadian Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA). University of Ottawa law students Lisa Feinberg, Harley Finkelstein, and Jordan Eric Plener, initiated the “minefield of privacy invasion” suit. Facebook’s Chris Kelly contradicted the claims, saying that: “We’ve reviewed the complaint and found it has serious factual errors — most notably its neglect of the fact that almost all Facebook data is willingly shared by users.”

There have been some concerns expressed regarding the use of Facebook as a means of surveillance and data mining. The Facebook privacy policy once stated, “We may use information about you that we collect from other sources, including but not limited to newspapers and Internet sources such as blogs, instant messaging services and other users of Facebook, to supplement your profile.” However, the policy was later updated and now states: “We may use information about you that we collect from other Facebook users to supplement your profile (such as when you are tagged in a photo or mentioned in a status update). In such cases we generally give you the ability to remove the content (such as allowing you to remove a photo tag of you) or limit its visibility on your profile.” The terminology regarding the use of collecting information from other sources, such as newspapers, blogs, and instant messaging services, has been removed.

Concerns were also raised on the BBC’s Watchdog programme in October 2007 when Facebook was shown to be an easy way in which to collect an individual’s personal information in order to facilitate identity theft. However, there is barely any personal information presented to non-friends – if users leave the privacy controls on their default settings, the only personal information visible to a non-friend is the user’s name, gender, profile picture, networks, and user name.

In August 2011 the Irish Data Protection Commissioner (DPC) started an investigation after receiving 16 complaints by europe-v-facebook.org which was founded by a group of Austrian students. The DPC stated in first reactions that the Irish DPC is legally responsible for privacy on Facebook for all users within the European Union and that he will “investigate the complaints using his full legal powers if necessary”. The complaints were filed in Ireland because all users who are not residents of the United States or Canada have a contract with “Facebook Ireland Ltd”, located in Dublin, Ireland. Under European law Facebook Ireland is the “data controller” for facebook.com, and therefore, facebook.com is governed by European data protection laws. Facebook Ireland Ltd. was established by Facebook Inc. to avoid US taxes.

The group europe-v-facebook.org made access requests at Facebook Ireland and received up to 1.200 pages of data per person in 57 data categories that Facebook was holding about them, including data that was previously removed by the users.Despite the amount of information given, the group claimed that Facebook did not give them all of its data. Some of the information not included was “likes”, data about the new face recognition function, data about third-party websites that use “social plugins” visited by users and information about uploaded videos.

The 16 complaints target different problems, from undeleted old “pokes” all the way to the question if sharing and new functions on Facebook should be opt-in or opt-out. The most severe could be a complaint that claims that the privacy policy and the consent to the privacy policy is void under European laws. It is reported that the group is planning to file more complaints, including one against the “Like” button.

In an Interview with the Irish Independent a spokesperson said, that the DPC will “go and audit Facebook, go into the premises and go through in great detail every aspect of security”. He continued by saying: “It’s a very significant, detailed and intense undertaking that will stretch over four or five days. Then we’ll publish a detailed report and Facebook will respond”. This means that the investigation by the DPC might become one of the most severe investigations into Facebook’s privacy practice in the past years.

Social networks, like Facebook, can have a detrimental effect on marriages with users becoming worried about their spouse’s contacts and relations with other people online, leading to martial breakdown and divorce. In the UK, between 20 to 33 percent of divorce petitions cite Facebook as a cause.

Facebook’s software has proven vulnerable to likejacking. On July 28, 2010 the BBC reported that security consultant Ron Bowes used a piece of code to scan Facebook profiles to collect data of 100 million profiles. The data collected was not hidden by the user’s privacy settings. Bowes then published the list online. This list, which has been shared as a downloadable file, contains the URL of every searchable Facebook user’s profile, their name and unique ID. Bowes said he published the data to highlight privacy issues, but Facebook claimed it was already public information.

And the list goes on and on … Envy, Stress, Identity theft, Defamation, Anorexia and bulimia, Holocaust denial, Pro-mafia groups, Trolling –

On March 31, 2010, the Today Show ran a segment detailing the deaths of three separate adolescent girls and trolls’ subsequent reactions to their deaths. Shortly after the suicide of high school student Alexis Pilkington, anonymous posters began trolling for reactions across various message boards, referring to Pilkington as a “suicidal slut”, and posting graphic images on her Facebook memorial page. The segment also included an exposé of a 2006 accident, in which an eighteen-year-old student out for a drive fatally crashed her father’s car into a highway pylon; trolls e-mailed her grieving family the leaked pictures of her mutilated corpse.

Conclusion;

I started this article with a question from my Daughter about having her own Facebook account. She is 13 yrs old, and because of my knowledge about Facebook and it’s many many reasons not to have an account, I believe that for me (and her) Facebook is not the way to go. If you ask yourself or any of your kin, “Why Do You Want/Have a Facebook account?”. And the answer you get is “All my friends are on it!”. Then isn’t it time you looked elsewhere on the web for a more secure and better engineered social network to share you deepest secrets with. A friends joke comes to mind. “Before Facebook came along, you’d have to phone your friends to tell them what you had for dinner.”

Resources;

• Wikipedia : The free encyclopedia that anyone can edit.
  
• Techlicious : Tech Made Simple.
  
• The Federal Trade Comission : Protecting America’s Consumers.
  
• ChildNet International : Helping to make the Internet a great and safe place for children
  
• Business Insider :
• Criticism of Facebook :
• eBusiness KnowledgeBase :  Top 15 Most Popular Social Networks.
• Europe v Facebook .org : A company asks its costumers to be as transparent as possible should be equally transparent.