The paper mainly reflects on the Facebook privacy issues. According to Coco et al. (2018), with the growth of social media, the privacy of people has become vulnerable to commodification and surveillance. Due to the use of social media like Facebook, an individual is allowing others to access their personal data and information. It is stated by Bakshy, Messing and Adamic (2015) that most of the Facebook users remain unaware of how their personal informations are vulnerable to reselling activities as well as information aggregation.
In this report, a proper discussion is done on the privacy issues that are faced by the Facebook users by providing number of examples from the news as well as recent case studies. Proper recommendations are also provided in this report for avoiding the Facebook privacy issues.
According to Ryan et al. (2016), a decade of apparent indifference related with data privacy in context to Facebook has revealed that the organizations have generally harvested the data of the users in order to target advertising, political adverting as well as for apparent success. It is found that there are a number of problems with the privacy and security settings of Facebook and some of the problems are discussed below:
Default privacy and security settings: From the past, there have been a number of complaints that reflect that Facebook redesigns its site or integrate some of the required changes from time to time due to which all the privacy settings are reverted to default (Chen and Sharma 2015). This puts the uses at risk as some of the information that they have kept private and become accessible to everyone.
Automatic posting of recent activity: It is stated by Miron and Ravid (2015) along with the privacy as well as security issues, the Facebook users sometimes loses control over the posting of the recent activity on their wall. This means that if an individually likes a video or comments on it then it will be automatically shown in the wall.
No user control for news feed: There are a number of complaints that shows that the users have lack of control over the newsfeed which is showcased in the homepage (Tandoc, Ferrucci and Duffy 2015). Taking along with the problem of automatic posting, this spreads scams as well as malware as the users are unable to separate from the top news as per their list
Fake Facebook profiles: A study that was conducted for 2 years have revealed that 40% of the Facebook profiles are fake that are either created by bots or by imposters. This is considered as one of the major risks for the Facebook users who indiscriminate while adding friends in their lists and then sharing or posting sensitive matters on the wall of their Facebook account.
Deleting and deactivating accounts: It is identified that until now, the Facebook does not have delete button so that the users cannot able to delete their account rather they deactivate their account (Rodriguez and Obradovac 2017). From the recent study, it is reflected that even a user has deactivated the account, the company can be able to sell the data and information related to that account to the third party for advertisement.
Instant personalization: Instant personalization was considered as a pilot program that was launched in the year 2010. It automatically helps in sharing the information with different affiliated sites (Yadav and Honkanen 2017). For example, it can be able to share the information about one’s favourites sports ream within the news site so one can see the headlines first or it can be able to share information about a user’s favourite brand or the music website that they like.
The data privacy scandals of Facebook generally reflect around the collection of various types of fakebook identifiable information of around 89 million by the various political consulting as well as strategic based communication firm from the Cambridge Analytica. The company is able to gain data from the various users of Facebook due to the confluence of a number of varieties that generally include improper safeguarding against the different companies that generally engage in the process of data harvesting with no oversight of developers by the Facebook (Miron and Ravid 2015).
One of the recent reports reflects that Facebook can be able to get data of the non-users from people who are present in the network such that when a user uploads the email address of their friends (Yi, Qin and Li 2015). Other detail generally comes from the cookies which are installed by the site on the browsers of the people who do not use Facebook if only they visit the site of Facebook with the share and like button. There are a number of other privacy issues that are faced by the users recently and some of the examples of privacy issues are reflected below by taking the help of the recent news as well as case studies.
On 9th June 2018, a blunder happens when people were posting items on their walls for their friends or smaller group but unknowingly the posts of the content have been shared publicly (Recode 2019). The blunder that occurs affected more than 14 million users whereas Facebook is blaming a software bug that automatically changes the setting of the user’s account.
In addition to this one of the recent news reflects that Facebook is once again sharing the data of the users to the different hardware manufacturers including Apple, Samsung and Amazon. According to (Digital Commerce 2019), the device manufacturers are allowed to access the data of the user without the consent of the users.
One of the surveys that are conducted reflects that out of 3413 Americans who use Facebook during 29th May to June 11 revealed that one of the political consulting firms had improperly gathered personal data of around 87 million users without their consent and uses it in Trump campaign (Billboard 2019). The company has then overhauled its setting in the month of March and has prompted users for reviewing their privacy settings.
On 15th December 2018, Facebook disclosed that a bug occurred that generally can affect around 6.8 million users that allow the app developers for seeing photos such that the users generally has uploaded but had never posted. This is considered as one of the major issues that the social media giant is facing for sending out information regarding data and security.
The privacy issues that are faced by Facebook users must be resolved as soon as possible. It is crucial for Facebook to take significant steps in improving the problems related to privacy and security as Facebook is one of the social media giants in the World (Nicolai et al. 2017). Moreover, the problems that are associated with the privacy of the users needs to be avoided if the users remain much more focussed before sharing or posting information either privately or publicly. The steps that must be taken by Facebook for managing the Facebook privacy of the users are generally elaborated below:
Adverting depending on the online activities: Third party cookies are used on the sites for serving advertisements that are believed to be relevant. However, it is very much necessary to opt out the cookies by using a proper option.
Adverting depending on the use of FT sites: One needs to adverts with the various products as well as services that are considered to be very much relevant that depending on the characteristics, one needs to see the online activity and related interest.
In addition to this, the steps that are required to be followed by the users for avoiding privacy issues are mainly illustrated below:
Beware of the apps and quizzes: It is quite important to keep oneself away from the apps and quizzes as for logging into the apps, personal information of the users may require which generally can cause a problem within the system.
Changing privacy settings: Privacy settings of an account must be changed from time to and it is necessary to check it regularly for making sure that the settings have not changed automatically.
Avoiding third-party apps: One can get tempted for installing games and other types of apps that are generally available with the help of Facebook but after doing so one needs to tap into the personal data including the name, profile picture, friend list and more. One needs to share their personal information as well as details in order to see the app however in order to resolve the problem, it is necessary to avoid the use of third-party apps.
Turning on extra security settings: Two-factor authentication must be turned on so that code is generally sent to the phone that is required each time one log-in. This is one of the significant steps that helps in avoiding the Facebook privacy issues.
Conclusion
From the entire paper, it can be concluded that Facebook privacy issues are creating major issues as well as problems in the life of people and it is quite necessary to take a significant step in order to avoid the privacy issues. The paper reflects on a number of case studies and news websites and elaborates the blunders that occur due to privacy issues. Moreover, the paper also illustrates a number of recommendations that must be followed by Facebook users in order to keep oneself away from the privacy issues.
References
Bakshy, E., Messing, S. and Adamic, L.A., 2015. Exposure to ideologically diverse news and opinion on Facebook. Science, 348(6239), pp.1130-1132.
Billboard., 2019. Facebook Privacy Issues Arise Again Following New Data-Sharing Report. [online] Available at: https://www.billboard.com/articles/business/8459083/facebook-privacy-issues-arise-again-new-data-sharing-report [Accessed 20 Jan. 2019].
Chen, R. and Sharma, S.K., 2015. Learning and self-disclosure behavior on social networking sites: the case of Facebook users. European Journal of Information Systems, 24(1), pp.93-106.
Coco, G.L., Maiorana, A., Mirisola, A., Salerno, L., Boca, S. and Profita, G., 2018. Empirically-derived subgroups of Facebook users and their association with personality characteristics: a Latent Class Analysis. Computers in Human Behavior, 86, pp.190-198.
Digital Commerce 360., 2019. Facebook users still have concerns about data privacy. [online] Available at: https://www.digitalcommerce360.com/2018/09/05/facebook-users-still-have-concerns-about-data-privacy/ [Accessed 20 Jan. 2019].
Miron, E. and Ravid, G., 2015. Facebook Groups as an Academic Teaching Aid: Case Study and Recommendations for Educators. Journal of Educational Technology & Society, 18(4).
Nicolai, L., Schmidbauer, M., Gradel, M., Ferch, S., Antón, S., Hoppe, B., Pander, T., von der Borch, P., Pinilla, S., Fischer, M. and Dimitriadis, K., 2017. Facebook groups as a powerful and dynamic tool in medical education: Mixed-method study. Journal of medical Internet research, 19(12).
Recode., 2019. Facebook’s latest privacy blunder, explained (again!). [online] Available at: https://www.recode.net/2018/6/9/17439780/facebook-privacy-blunder-public-posts-14-million-explained [Accessed 20 Jan. 2019].
Rodriguez, J.T. and Obradovac, I., 2017. Comparative study on user’s perception of privacy issues on Facebook: Young adults vs. adults in Sweden.
Ryan, T., Reece, J., Chester, A. and Xenos, S., 2016. Who gets hooked on Facebook? An exploratory typology of problematic Facebook users. Cyberpsychology: Journal of Psychosocial Research on Cyberspace, 10(3).
Tandoc, E.C., Ferrucci, P. and Duffy, M., 2015. Facebook use, envy, and depression among college students: Is facebooking depressing?. Computers in Human Behavior, 43, pp.139-146.
Yadav, M. and Honkanen, M., 2017. User’s Awareness of Privacy Issues Presented by Third Party Applications on Facebook.
Yi, S., Qin, Z. and Li, Q., 2015, August. Security and privacy issues of fog computing: A survey. In International conference on wireless algorithms, systems, and applications (pp. 685-695). Springer, Cham.
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