Network Societies and the Implications for Their Privacies - Essay Example

? Network societies and the implications for their privacies Introduction In the last decade the use of various social networking sites or SNSs, haverisen significantly. The SNSs are mainly used for socialising, where the users make new friends and reconnect with their old ones. There are also various kinds of online forums where likeminded people come together to share their views and opinions. Along with forming a network of ‘online’ social connections, SNSs also allow users to upload photos, videos and various forms of multimedia data, in order to communicate even better. The popularity of the SNSs is quite evident when we find in a 2009 report, which stated that globally almost 38% internet users are a member of one or many of the SNSs, and maintain regular profiles in the social networking sites (Wray, Social Networking Booming with Doubling of Online Profiles, 2009). Facebook, at present is the most popular SNS, with a rise of nearly 86.1% in user percentage (ibid). One major characteristic of these SNSs is that the users can upload their personal data on these sites on a daily basis. As per the recent study made by OfCom in 2010, “Social networking accounts for nearly a quarter of all time spent on the internet (23 per cent compared to 9 per cent in 2007).  This has been driven by the rapid growth of Facebook, which grew by 31 per cent. The average Facebook user spent 6 and 30 minutes on the site during May 2010,” (OfCom, Consumers spend almost half of their waking hours using media and communications, 2010. The 2008 OfCom report noted that an adult user, on an average, maintained his/her profile on around 1.6 SNSs, while enter their profiles at least once, every two days (OfCom, Social networking: a quantitative and qualitative research report into attitudes, behaviours & use, 2008). This expeditious rise in the usage of social networking sites in the past decade, has created new problems, where there are increased instances of user personal data being misused through identity theft and cyber stalking, for various commercial activities related to unauthorised searching for employees, or fishing for prospective clients (Brown, Edwards, and Marsden, Staking 2.0: privacy protection in a leading social networking site, nd). The internet and SNSs being open to all, the uploaded user information (even personal information) becomes accessible to a much wider user spectrum, besides the intended user group. Often user inexperience and a general unawareness coupled with inappropriate SNS website designing, unintentionally help in the misuse of private information by various commercial organisations. These misuses and the future potentiality of fraudulent activities using the obtained personal information have raised questions and concerns over the issue of creating a stronger security system that would assure SNS user privacy, and the inaccessibility of the uploaded information outside the targeted viewer group. As for example, a member of the medical SNS PatientsLikeMe, may opt to discuss his/her condition only with a specific group of people (like those sharing similar medical problems), thus making it imperative that the site gives the user his/her right to privacy. In this context, we will discuss network societies and the implications for their privacies, focussing on Facebook, as it is the leading SNS now. Discussion What is a SNS? Boyd and Ellison, defined SNSs as services provided that are internet-based and allow its users to: Create user profiles which can be kept partially public or completely public, within the provide domain of the site; Create a ‘friends’ list and a group where they can upload and share private information; Have an access to the friends’ profiles, and to these friends’ ‘friend list,’ where the user can view all the connections made by their friends and often by ‘other users’ (who are not direct friends, but may have common friends or common interests) within the domain of the same SNS (Boyd, and Ellison, 2007, 210-211). The ‘other users’ though not being on ‘friends’ list,’ can be connected at any point of time and through various SN platforms, like MySpace, Google+, Facebook, or Geni (a website for regrouping relatives). Often connections are forged through the external links coming in via other SNSs, like through ‘followers list’ seen in Twitter, or YouTube ‘subscriber list,’ even from the LinkedIn professional/business links Thus one can imagine the vastness of the extent and scope of the SNSs within the internet. Various instances have shown that recently organisations are showing a regular tendency to obtain illegally, personal information from the SNSs, for conducting consumer-behaviour-oriented advertisings. ‘Profiling via the predictive data mining’ is another form of new technology used extensively for illegally accessing personal information and automatically categorising internet users (Bygrave, 2001). These technologies are now being used by many of the EU institutions for gaining user data (user profiling) in the name of security, leading to protests from rights activists on the violation of citizens’ rights to privacy on the internet (Public Security, Privacy and Technology in Europe: Moving Forward. 2007). In the context of an increased threat to violation of user privacy, the focus is now on establishing stringent security rules for maintaining confidentiality within the various SNSs. However, a look at present legal scenario shows us the existing laws for tackling privacy violations are inadequate and fail to safeguard personal information of the user within the SNS environment (Dunleavy, Margetts, Bastow, & Tinkler, 2006). Facebook- a popular social networking site: Facebook, a popular social platform, is primarily used for making new friends, relocating the old ones, and playing different online games (West, Lewis and Currie, 2009). However, here the focus remains on further developing the real life connections, instead of forming new online/virtual relationships. The young users mainly use Facebook to interact with the people they actually know from their real life surroundings (Marwick, Diaz, and Palfrey, 2010). In the Facebook guidelines, there are claims that very young users would be restricted from using the site, “You will not use Facebook if you are under 13,” which theoretically disallows children under 13 years, from becoming a member (Facebook Statement of Rights and Responsibilities, 4 (5)-Registration and Account Security). However, this guideline is not effectively monitored, and it is very easy for any underage user (below 13 years of age), to mislead the age-verification process by presenting a false claim (Steeves, and Webster, 2008). Other protection processes like content advisories or credit card verification, were slightly more successful in disallowing the underage users from sharing too detailed personal information, but failed to stop them from taking entering the social networking site. Besides the problem of underage users, various researches show that 15-17 year olds, to break all age related restrictions, often end up sharing more personal data than actually required (Lwin, Stanaland, and Miyazaki, 2008). Even adult users, owing to lack of concern or even knowledge, often fail to modify the ‘default privacy settings,’ leading to greater chances of the data uploaded, being misused (Tuunaimen, Pitkanen, and Hovi, 2009). Suck lack of concern or knowledge amongst the users led to ‘data brokers’ (ChoicePoint) raking in millions from the personal information, which they collected from the “digital dossiers” of various SNSs users of Facebook, especially from people that put in too much personal information on the site (Bloomberg BusinessWeek, 2005). In the virtual world personal data is viewed more like a ‘commodity,’ a saleable property, for the various business organisations, data brokers, and credit-reporting firms, where they target young consumers, who account for multi-billion $ global businesses (Ciocchetti, 2007). In Facebook and other social networking sites, a user often has no choice but to keep free/open some of his/her personal data for general viewing, and it this form of data that becomes highly vulnerable, to be used by firms for their marketing strategies. To become a Facebook member one just has to give his email id, and officially just click and agree to the terms and conditions, as set by the company regarding the privacy policies on the domain (Hashemi, 2009). Thus, in this manner Facebook is able to collect large data, once the user enters the domain and starts using the site, as regards his/her personal information, which is ‘necessary’ to customise the offered site services. However, there are possibilities that such personal data may be ‘misused’ for marketing purposes or even sold to a third party at a hefty price. In 2007, three application platforms (Public Search, Beacon, and Social Ads) were added on Facebook that were used to help users play games, upload more data, share video clippings and pictures. These applications had access to user’s personal data (except the contact information), thus, allowing a large section of the users to become vulnerable to data misuse, even without them being aware. Conclusion From the above discussion, it is clear that the surge in the use of SNSs, without a proper legal framework to protect user privacy, has made a large amount of private information on the internet open and vulnerable to misuse, possible privacy violation, and even potential financial frauds. One possible route to lessen this danger is to educate the users on potential risks that may arise from uploading too much of personal data on the internet and SNSs, and the various liabilities that are generally associated with use of unauthorised data. The SNSs also must take care to monitor the nature of information uploaded, breaches in the user privacy, and stop any other kind of misuse of user personal information for commercial activities. The government must also frame stringent measures to tackle the business firms that make use of modern technologies to illegally access user personal data for their personal gains. References Bloomberg BusinessWeek, 2005. They are watching you. Retrieved from http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_04/b3917056_mz005.htm [Accessed 30th November 2011] Boyd, D., and Ellison, N., 2007. Social network sites: De?nition, history, and scholarship. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 13(1):210–230. Brown, I., Edwards, L., and Marsden, C., nd. Staking 2.0: privacy protection in a leading social networking site. Retrieved from, http://www.law.ed.ac.uk/ahrc/gikii/docs2/edwards.pdf [Accessed on 1st December 2011] Bygrave, L., 2001. 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