[557] in Privacy_Forum
[ PRIVACY Forum ] Facebook's Devious Privacy Ploy
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (privacy@vortex.com)
Thu Dec 10 15:26:47 2009
Date: Thu, 10 Dec 2009 12:00:51 -0800
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Facebook's Devious Privacy Ploy
http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000652.html
Greetings. The Net is abuzz about some major privacy changes by
Facebook, which show signs in key ways of being yet another in their
continuing history of ham-handed privacy gaffes. No, I'm not
concentrating today on their notorious "beacon" system, though it was
just announced that Facebook is shutting beacon down and paying almost
$10M to settle a related lawsuit ( http://bit.ly/4NPd82 [PC World] ).
No, today let's talk about how Facebook has attempted to deceptively
shill users into lowering their privacy protections, in the false
guise of supposedly *improving* their privacy settings.
I am not a big Facebook user. In fact, I am hardly a Facebook user at
all. I have an account for research purposes, but I don't publicize
it. I've routinely ignored the multitude of "friend" requests I
receive from people who find the account (and I do essentially the
same thing for "LinkedIn" requests -- where I don't even have a
account).
My attitude toward these services is that -- at least for me -- they
do not bring significant value. Plus, the noise level of associated
phishing, spam, and other crooked solicitations is way too high, and
frankly the amount of time required to maintain more social networking
accounts along with everything else I deal with would just be
unproductive.
That's not so say that anyone else need share my opinions, but I hope
this explains to those legitimate folks who have tried to contact me
via those services why they did not receive responses (on the other
hand, I'm plenty easy to contact in a multitude of other ways).
Facebook of course is all about sharing information. But as we know
from a continuing sequence of news stories, many people are getting
seriously burned from sharing their personal information on Facebook.
Youngsters -- and even adults -- are getting into trouble for photos
they post showing partying or drinking. People have been fired -- or
not hired -- on the basis of such photos. In one recent case, an
insurance company has tried to kill a woman's health coverage,
apparently because they thought she was having too much "fun" as shown
in a Facebook entry.
Amanda Knox's very recent murder conviction in Italy may have
significantly been unfairly influenced by the Italian media's
fascination and exploitation of her Facebook materials. Law
enforcement is now using Facebook for sting operations, even for such
relatively mundane matters as targeting underage drinkers.
Without attempting to evaluate right now whether or not such uses of
Facebook should be viewed as legitimate, it is clear that keeping the
minutia of your personal life offline is obviously a good step to help
ensure that you won't be subjected to judgment and possible
exploitation based on that information.
But for those persons who do feel the desire to share their lives
online, having complete control over the manner of that sharing is
critical.
Unless you're a celebrity or some other sort of public figure, sharing
more than the absolute minimum of personal information with the the
world at large ("everyone") via Facebook usually just doesn't make
sense. Even if you're a young person seemingly with nothing to lose,
it must be remembered that once information, photos, or other data
have been publicly available for any period of time, they are likely
to be available in some form, archived somewhere, essentially forever.
And photos that didn't seem to matter when you're 16 may have a whole
different impact when you're 30.
Be that as it may, the key to using Facebook "safely" -- to the extent
that this is possible -- is by consistent and careful use of their
relatively confusing privacy controls, that determine which
information that you put online will be shared with particular classes
of users.
So it's a pretty big deal when Facebook, as they've just done,
completely revamps their privacy system, and forces all uses to make
new selections about virtually all aspects of their Facebook privacy.
Unfortunately, the manner in which Facebook has done this shows all
the signs of being what amounts to a nasty privacy scam.
To be fair, the Facebook privacy changes are not *all* bad. For
example, they now permit per-item controls over privacy settings.
That's a positive change.
But the truly devious aspect of what Facebook has done is their
choosing of new recommended privacy defaults for all users --
presented during the new "forced" privacy changes dialogue -- that in
many cases seriously *reduce* default privacy protections on
Facebook entries, in ways that will often share with much larger
audiences key materials that you may previously have (wisely)
restricted only to, for example, your friends.
While it's possible to override these new "suggested defaults," one of
the worst actions that can be taken in a privacy context is to try
manipulate users into accepting reduced privacy protections on a
default basis, especially in the context of promoting "improved"
privacy settings.
It's duplicitous, deceitful, and as with Facebook's ill-fated beacon
system, calls into question the entire underpinnings of Facebook's
"ethical" structure.
The reason why Facebook would risk behaving this way seems rather
clear. They've watched as more "broadcast" oriented systems like
Twitter have gained massive popularity, and Facebook wants a bigger
piece of that pie.
Twitter users by and large are fully aware of the fact that
they're potentially "tweeting" to the entire world. In many ways
that's the whole point. And since this is understood, the sorts of
information we tweet tends to be rather carefully framed with this in
mind.
Facebook on the other hand is attempting to coerce users into
drastically changing privacy settings on a potentially vast range of
personally-sensitive materials in ways that could in some cases -- no
kidding! -- seriously upset or damage their lives.
If users wish to voluntarily and without coercion increase the
visibility of their Facebook data that's fine.
Facebook's new system of proposing changed defaults for most users,
that will often drastically reduce users' privacy, is difficult to
categorize as anything other than basically exploitative and -- yes --
evil.
--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein
lauren@vortex.com
Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800
http://www.pfir.org/lauren
Co-Founder, PFIR
- People For Internet Responsibility - http://www.pfir.org
Co-Founder, NNSquad
- Network Neutrality Squad - http://www.nnsquad.org
Founder, GCTIP - Global Coalition
for Transparent Internet Performance - http://www.gctip.org
Founder, PRIVACY Forum - http://www.vortex.com
Member, ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy
Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/laurenweinstein
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