Facebook: Privacy Issue

(Image source: Wordpress.com, 2009)

Social networking websites can be seen becoming increasingly popular and is growing at a booming pace. According to statistics done by The Nielsen Company (2010), the overall amount of users visiting social networking sites has increased since 2007, and Facebook was the top among all the sites with approximately 207 million visiters and 67% social media users from all over the world in December 2009.

(Image source: Nielsen Wire, 2010)

However, Facebook has came up with privacy issue lately. According to an article "Why Facebook is Wrong: Privacy is still important" on Read Write Web written by Marshall Kirkpatrcik (2010), the default setting of privacy of Facebook was primarily set to only viewable by other users if their friend requests are approved by a user, but later, the user's information was no longer kept secret and is visible to the public even if they are not friends to the user. This is due to the new default privacy setting of Facebook, which set all the information public to the others, while the only way to avoid the information of the users being exposed to the public is to change the privacy settings by themselves, and this action does not receive positive response from the users (Kirkpatrick, 2010).

The implication brought by this issue is that many users are starting to leave or close down their Facebook account. According to Paul (2010), those users who are not happy with the privacy issues of Facebook launched a "Quit Facebook Day", where many users responsed to it and decided to delete their account, because they felt that Facebook's authorities show no respect to the users' privileges and their information, and they made the privacy settings too complicated.

Facebook has already gone against the California privacy and and online privacy laws for exposing users information to the public (Musil, 2009). Once, I updated a status which stated the name of my favorite actor , and five minutes later a stranger, who has the same name as the actor I mentioned, with a disturbing display picture added me. I immediately ignored his request and changed my privacy setting to all private and only viewable by my friends. Peter Marks, the technology editor of ABC website, stated that people may not aware that when they are uploading pictures to Facebook, the photos may be visible to the public or even stalkers, because the photos may be searched through Google Images (Breen, 2010).

In my opinion, it is hard for privacy to exist in cyberspace. However, user's right and privacy should be protected, and drawing a law for it may not help much, but it can at least protect the user's right. However, I will still continue to use Facebook, because it is convenient for me to keep in contact with my friends and relatives, despite the privacy issues.


References:

1. Breen, G., 2010, Teen's murder sparks Facebook privacy plea, ABC News, viewed 9 June 2010, http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/05/17/2901537.htm


2. Kirkpatrick, M., 2010, Why Facebook is Wrong: Privacy is still important, Read Write Web, viewed 9 June 2010, http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/why_facebook_is_wrong_about_privacy.php


3. Musil, S., 2008, Users file privacy lawsuit against Facebook, Cnet News, viewed 9 June 2010, from http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10311625-93.html


4. Nielsen, 2010, Led by Facebook, Twitter, Global Time Spent on Social Media Sites up 82% Year over Year,viewed 9 June 2010, http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/global/led-by-facebook-twitter-global-time-spent-on-social-media-sites-up-82-year-over-year/


5. Paul, I., 2010, It's quit Facebook Day, are you leaving?, PC World, viewed 9 June 2010, http://www.pcworld.com/article/197621/its_quit_facebook_day_are_you_leaving.html