How Facebook Has Destroyed Privacy Boundaries - Essay Example

How Facebook Has Destroyed Privacy Boundaries? Social networking has come to assume a central position in the modern currency of human interaction. People prefer to sit around in front of their computer screens and “meet” each other online rather than socialize in person anymore. This trend has been more consistently observed with teenagers and young adults than with people of a larger age bracket. The conventional methods of meeting up on a barbecue have gradually given way to surfing cyber chat rooms and social networking websites. In recent years, a number of social networking websites have been able to take advantage of the teeming amount of users looking to register and use the social networking services. This in turn has provided these websites with unwanted levels of influence that has tended to create privacy debacles that were unheard of in conventional human interaction (Berkman and Shumway). Perhaps one of the most popular websites for social networking in recent years has been Facebook. The website has come under the limelight time and again. Previously it was under the limelight as a business model for innovation and hallmark breakthroughs but in recent times it has been scrutinized for breaches of privacy. The various forms of breach of privacy have been recognized and investigated and is confirmed phenomenon leaving little to doubt them anymore (Iachello and Hong). Some breaches of privacy are caused due to users overlooking fine print details while other breaches of privacy occur due to online surveillance. In addition to everything else, certain forms of breach of privacy occur due to the inherent design of social networking platforms. This paper will focus on the various forms of breach of privacy that have resulted from the use of Facebook whether these breaches were intentional or otherwise. Furthermore, the consequences of these breaches will be looked into in detail to gauge their effects on ordinary people. It is natural for human beings to be wary of each other when conducting conversations in person. Another major factor that limits the amount of information carried by human beings is the limit on information delivered at any one point in time through conversations. It would be unrealistic to assume that a person could convey all kinds of personal and family information to another in one meeting alone. However, this situation is totally reversed when using computing platforms to interact. People who use social networking websites such as Facebook will realize that a large amount of information has to be divulged in order to sign up for such services. The typical information required for such sign ups consists of a person’s name, date of birth, email address, home address and the like. Other forms of personal information is exposed and brought to the forefront as a person tends to interact with their social circles (Pankoke-Babatz and Jeffrey). Social networks such as Facebook allow the user to search for and add new “friends” who are effectively anybody you might know including friends, family and acquaintances. The interaction between a typical Facebook user and his “friends” is carried out through the wall of each individual account holder. The idea is simple and seem revolutionary at first – each user has a wall that anybody can write upon if they are included in the individual’s friend list. Moreover, other users do not necessarily have to write things on the wall, instead, they can simply choose to like things online and share it on their friend’s walls. This means that if I was browsing the internet for a pair of boxing gloves and I happened to find a pair I like, I could essentially share the link on my wall and on the wall of my friends. This would allow me to tell my friends that I recently might have made a purchase of boxing gloves and that they might be interested in the same boxing gloves. At first sight the idea seems just absolutely amazing. Imagine the power of being able to share anything you wanted to share with everyone. Only problem in this arrangement is that this arrangement tends to share things that you might not really want to share with everyone else (Spinello). One typical example in this regard is relationship status that might be open for everyone to see unless you are not a Facebook guru. Unless a user does not know all the loop holes in the system, there is little chance that they would be able to hide all kinds of information from everyone. The typical list of everyone also tends to include stalkers, prowlers and data miners roaming around in the cyber domain. In some sense, the work of online data miners is resolved through the Facebook platform. In context of the boxing glove example from before, Facebook tends to take note of your likes and dislikes and uses them to display a list of advertisements on the right edge of an individual’s profile. If Facebook were the only online pirate involved in such activities, it would tend to make some sense somehow but the truth is far removed from this position. Facebook along with some other prominent platforms (including Google) have been charged with distributing personal information from their clients without the prior knowledge of the client (Tavani and Grodzinsky). In technical terms, what Facebook and other such platforms have done is little more than mined for information that was already available because people had made it available. The only problem in this entire situation is the fact that the people whose information is being used had no idea that this information was actually available for online data mining. This happened because anyone who signs up for Facebook has to read through a long End User License Agreement (EULA) which most people tend to avoid by simply clicking on the next or ok buttons. This behavior and this mode of information extraction tends to clear giants such as Google and Facebook from all blame. In legal terms, if a person has signed up for Facebook they have explicitly agreed to share any information they might have entered with the social networking framework. As per the EULA, the Facebook administration is at luxury of using the information as they please. Initially the information was being used for targeted marketing through targeted advertising. However, in more recent times such information has been divulged to other groups in the name of “social research”. The EULA agreement ensures that there are no legal consequences of extracting information from people’s accounts and using it. There are no legal remedies for any such behavior from any such social networking platform even if the consequences are as gory as rape and murder. This position tends to clear legal blame for any such behavior but this can still not be justified in ethical terms. While legally such behavior from Facebook may be justified but there is absolutely little ethical justification for such behavior otherwise. The important thing to realize about the discussion presented above is that it relies on information that is revealed inadvertently by the user. In certain circumstances the unsuspecting user may actually release information with complete consent. Consider an unsuspecting user on Facebook who receives a friend request from the social circle of someone who they may know. The natural response would be add this new person to your friends list in order to enhance your count of friends. Since there are no mechanisms to identify the real identity of this person, this newly added “friend” could be anyone posing to be anyone. Cases have been reported of cyber stalking ending up in possible rape and murder that have been perpetrated using Facebook. Since underage users cannot be stopped from signing up for these accounts, there is no real mechanism to check the inclusion of users under the age of 14. Given the age and relative immaturity of these users, there is ample chance to abuse these users by gaining their trust through online interaction. Older users of Facebook have been known to have taken advantage of younger users on more than one occasion (Weinberger). This introduces an altogether new and disturbing aspect of Facebook and its invasion of privacy. The need of the hour is to classify the various forms of online breaches of privacy that take place due to social networking platforms such as Facebook. The advertent and inadvertent breaches of online privacy need to be tackled separately though with an iron hand to produce lasting solutions. One possibility would be to use user identification such as the social security ID in order to sign up for a Facebook account. This sign up could be verified by mailing physical confirmation letters such as those used by banks and fiscal institutions for confirmation of users. Unless a real trail cannot be created using these social networking platforms, there will always be the chance that unsuspecting users will fall victim to privacy breaches of one kind or the other. Works Cited Berkman, R. I. and C. A. Shumway. Digital dilemmas: Ethical issues for online media professionals. Ames: Iowa State Pres, 2003. Iachello, G. and J. Hong. “End-user privacy in human–computer interaction.” Foundations and Trends in Human–Computer Interaction, 1(1) (2007): 1–137. Pankoke-Babatz, U. and P. Jeffrey. “Documented norms and conventions on the Internet.” International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction, 14(2) (2002): 219–235. Spinello, R. A. “Beyond copyright. A moral investigation of intellectual property protection in cyberspace.” Cavalier, R. J. The impact of the Internet on our moral lives. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005. 27-48. Tavani, H. T. and F. S. Grodzinsky. “Cyberstalking, personal privacy, and moral responsibility.” Ethics and Information Technology, 4 (2002): 123–132. Weinberger, D. “Anonymously yours.” KM World, May 2005 (2005): 18–19. Read More