Privacy Policies of Social Media Sites - Case Study Example

Introduction Internet social media sites are the websites that enable users to create connections and links with other people who use the internet. These social networks have a remote system of storing information, instead of the personal computers of the people who access them1 (Carroll and Buchholtz 210). Social media may be used to keep in touch with friends and relatives, create new contacts and find people who share the same interests. These internet services have tremendously grown popular since they were initially embraced on a large scale towards the end of the nineties. Nonetheless, numerous individuals who may not be friends and relatives have an interest in the information persons post on social media. People aiming to steal identities, scam artists, debt collectors as well as stalkers and companies in search for market advantage have resulted to using social media to collect information concerning the consumers. The organizations that operate the social media platforms are also gathering various forms of data concerning their users with the aim of personalizing their services as well as selling advertisements. Description Social media sites have different degrees of privacy offered to the users in that for some of the sites such as Facebook, users are encouraged to provide their actual names along with other personal information through their profiles2 (Magdalinski 149). This information typically includes dates of birth, telephone numbers as well as email addresses and locations. Other sites give users the chance to provide additional information about themselves that includes their interests, hobbies, preferred films and relationship statuses. Nonetheless, there are sites like Match.com where most of the users favour anonymity and therefore connecting to their real identities may be difficult. Regardless of this, people may sometimes be identified through face re-identification and studies that have been done on two social media sites have demonstrated that through overlapping fifteen percent of similar photos, profile pictures with the same pictures over multiple sites may be matched to clearly identify the users. Security along with privacy that is linked to social media sites are essentially issues of behavior and not technology. With increase in the amount of information that is posted on social media, the higher the amount of information that is accessible for potential compromise by the people whose intentions are malicious. The individuals who provide personal information about themselves or people they are associated with, knowingly or unknowingly, are at more risk. Information like social security number, address, telephone number, business information and financial information should not be shared online. In the same way, uploading photographs and videos may result in a company’s breach of confidentiality or an individual’s breach of privacy. Analysis After creating a Facebook account, the users should access the privacy settings tab from where they may be able to choose how public they prefer their profiles to be. The users are given the option of choosing “public” which makes the profile accessible to all the people who may encounter it, but this is a dangerous setting. They are also given the choice of “friends only” which enables only the friends to access the profile information and view the profile. This option is not as dangerous as the previous one provided all the people that are accepted as friends are known by the owner of the profile. The final option is “custom” which is a good option as it allows the owner of the profile to choose the friends who will be able to access the profile and those who cannot. The page also allows the users to edit the applications and games that have been blocked, control what follows tagging on posts and pictures as well as limiting the audiences on posts that were uploaded in the past. On the other hand, Twitter’s operation differs to a small degree from that of Facebook as a result of the small degree of information slots that are provided by Twitter. A new user on Twitter has the choice of setting his or her tweets to public and this allows all the followers to view the tweets, or they may set the tweets to private. In the case of private tweets, the users are required to approve the people who may view their statuses each time they post one. This may be irritating if one is tweeting many times in a day, but the settings may be changed through the “Tweet Privacy option and unchecking the “Protect my tweets” option. Interpretation Fair information practice principles that were developed by FTC were the outcome of the an inquiry by the commission into the way the online entities gather and use personal information and protects to make sure that practice is fair and allows enough safeguarding to the privacy of information. The FTC has been looking at online privacy issues from 1995 and in the report it created in 1998; it described the broadly conventional principles of Notice, Choice, Access and Security. The commission went further to identify enforcement, which was the utilization of dependable mechanism to provide sanctions in regard to noncompliance as an important part of any governmental or self-regulatory program to safeguard online privacy. Over the rest of the social media networks, Facebook may be considered as the most the most dangerous and vulnerable, and with more than eight hundred million registered users in almost all the countries in the world, it poses a database for destruction. Majority of the users of Facebook do not know that when they post on Facebook, nothing can be deleted permanently. All the pictures, statuses, comments, wall posts and private messages as well as live chat conversations are stored in the massive databases of Facebook that has more than Sixty thousand servers with the numbers always increasing. Evaluation The law requires that social media sites provide the users with access to all the settings regarding privacy and restrict the amount of information that may be viewed by other users3 (Ramzan 270). This law would be more practical if it was made public so that the users of social media may become aware of it. Most of the people who use social media sites are not aware that they can be able to change their privacy settings on these sites and they also do not know how to change these settings. This poses a major problem as the default settings make information available to everyone on the internet and more accessible to the people who are members of the same social media site4 (Klein 33). All the information that is posted on social networks is easily accessible to almost all the people who can access the internet. Engagement Even though information storage on Facebook’s and Twitter’s servers is permanent, it does not mean that the information may be accessed by people or viewed in any manner. This is case applies to more than Facebook’s and Twitter’s case as it is also the same for other sites on the internet, particularly the social media sites. All the searches that are made on Google are also stored in massive databases. The storage of all the inputs by users as well as their information in databases is not a bad idea altogether. If there was an occurrence over the internet that required legal information, this information would be easily accessible to the authority that requires it. Therefore, even if a status update of a tweet is deleted, it does not disappear as it is merely made invisible to the public. Nothing that is uploaded to the internet may be permanently erased. Conclusion The users of social networks should be aware of the privacy settings that are available to them and know how to use them. The privacy policy document that the users are required to read before they sign up to the various social networking sites is extremely important. Regardless of the fact that these documents may be lengthy, it contains information that is important in regard to profiles and all information that is input. This goes a long way in protecting the privacy of the users and reducing chances of their personal information being used maliciously. Works cited Carroll, Archie B, and Ann K Buchholtz. Business & Society. Australia: South-Western, Cengage Learning, 2012. Print. Klein, Rebecca T. Frequently Asked Questions About Texting, Sexting, And Flaming. New York: Rosen Pub., 2013. Print. Magdalinski, Tara. Study Skills For Sport Studies. New York: Routledge, 2013. Print. Ramzan, Naeem. Social Media Retrieval. London: Springer, 2013. Print. Read More