e Business Facebook

8/6/2019 e Business Facebook

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/e-business-facebook 1/12

Social Network Sites privacy a case study of Facebook

Preface , literature review

Introduction

social network sites (SNS) being a part of social people life, it reflects peoples physical

activities in network sites. Social network sites are a network applications and services

which facilitate collective actions and sharing information such as: Facebook, Tagged,

Twitter, etc. SNS members are increasing rapidly due to the development of peoples

environment and social life. As a result researchers interest increased as well to study the

impact of these sites on individuals life, particularly in the privacy aspect, and the

consequences of sharing personal information. Recently, Facebook is criticised more than

before in the aspect of the privacy of peoples information (Nov, Wattal 2009). Although the

internet privacy has a wide interest to research, social consequences has not had enough

interest if we take in account that the information shared in Facebook are not just for

Facebook, it is shared and used sometimes by members of its online community,

consequently, the usage of these information depends on other members behavio ur whichaffects peoples privacy concern. the Internet User Information Privacy Concerns (IUIPC)

suggests that peoples worries are increasing regarding to their online privacy (Malhotra et

al 2004). The evidence shows that users of the internet society are not likely to share their

private information online, while some of them do share when they know that their benefits

are more valuable that the information they provide . As general, they argue that the (IUIPC)

are effected by external factors like Culture. As a result, internet privacy concerns effected

community privacy concerns (Nov, Wattal 2009).

Sharing information

Sharing information between members of a community could be the major reason of

attending (SNSs) but research shows that sharing information affected with many factors

such as: Firstly, the period of tenure in an online community, thus, as long as a membership

last longer, a member tend to share more information and update his profile,( Brown and

Duguid). Secondly, personal privacy, which increased by time and become more important



for a person who use (SNSs) For example: when a person add a friend to his Facebook he

shares him photos and contact information but Facebook beacon allowed friends of friends

to know a members updated. However, sharing these information could be control through

settings which allow users to adjust sharing their information to be appeared to everybody,

friend of friends or just to friends. And finally, the network position of a member, a network

position measured according to his or her centrality which is the number of direct ties in a

given node (Freeman 1979). It has been asserted that a members centrality is positively

related to his or her ability to share information wit h other members, therefore, as much as

a person able to share information he is more central, which is consequently increase

others access to a members information which increases the uncertainty of the

information shared on the website as well as the p eople who get access to the information

which encourage people to restrict sharing their information with others(Wasko and Faraj

2005).

Revelation of Facebook information and the consequences on university

students

(Lampe et al 2006) asserted that Facebook is massively used by university students, 70 per

cent of students whom questioned declared that they spend more than thirty minutes a day

on Facebook and 21 per cent spend more than an hour on the site. It also has been revealed

that Facebook users tend to show their personal information. For example, 82 per cent of

Facebook users provide their personal details such as date of birth , gender, marital status,

political views and cell phone(Gross and Acquisti 2005). Students believe that making their

membership useful need to show their personal infor mation, therefore, finding a friend or a

class mate is easier if his personal details appear on his profile, otherwise a member need to

categorize his search many times using the options of Location, Education and Workplace.

The previous results lead to the first assumption: The more using Facebook, the more

information shared between users. A new member wants to attend Facebook need to sign

up, and to sign up he a new member need to reveal his personal information. Members with

three hundred users or more are more likely to show their personal details such as their

preferable music (82.9 per cent compared to 64 per cent), favourite clubs(81 per cent

compared to 51.5 per cent), interests (85.3 per cent compare to 64.1) than users who got

less friends(Jones and Soltren 2005) which means that people who have got more details on

their profile are easier to find by other users. Hence, the previous facts lead to the second

assumption: the number of friends on u sers profile related to the amount of personalinformation revealed. According to Pew study which made in 2000, 61 per cent of users who

hided their personal details on the internet concern themselves as Privacy Defenders ,

those users believe that their personal data are not safe on the internet and it is used by

businesses to collect information, Meanwhile, users who less concern about their personal

information more likely to divulge their own information (Young and Quan- Haase 2009).

Moreover, (Viseu et al. 2004) argue that people who just worry about their personal

information when it abused likely to gain greater value of using the internet t han users who



restrict sharing their personal information. Further, if a user does not think that his

information are threatened, he is likely to disclose it. Based on that, the third assumption is:

members concerns about their privacy have low levels to share personal information.

People are worried about their privacy, that concern increases clearly online. Fox et al

(2000) found that the majority of the internet users are worried about their privacy in twoaspects: first, obtaining their data by hackers and finding a personal information about them

by unwanted audiences. Acquisti and Gross (2006) asserted that students are highly

concerned about their personal information such as: sexual orientation or political views to

be obtained by unwanted audiences. Tufekci (2008) confirmed that students demonstrate

real concerns when they use their real names. As a result the previous findings lead the

fourth assumption that the more information revealed about a user, the more concerned he

is about unwanted audiences.

Young and Quan- Haase (2009) suggested information revelation as a method to examine

profile privacy , that means as much as students reveal information on their Facebook, theytend to restrict accessibility to their profiles. SNSs met this need for users by offering many

levels of privacy, for example: Facebook settings include four levels of privacy all networks

and all friends, some networks and all friends, friends of friends and only friends . as a

result Young and Quan- Haase (2009) suggested the fifth assumption that profile privacy

positively associated with the information revealed.

In order to protect their profiles, members of SNSs recurrently use false information

regarding to their date of birth, or current city and also they restrict the visibility of their

profile to be accessed with th eir friends only (Tufekci 2008). On the other hand, Gross and

Acquisti (2005) argue that users rarely tend to improve false personal information and they

are unlikely inclined to change their privacy settings.

Users privacy on Facebook

Young and Quan- Haase (2009) asserted many strategies implemented by students to

protect their information such as:

y Exclude personal information of their profile.

y Use the private email feature to contact with members instead of posting on a

friends wall.

y Use a websites settings to restrict access of unwanted members of an SNS. Forexample: a member able in Facebook to un-tag himself of unwanted pictures,

therefore, if a friend tag another member on a picture, the latter can un-tag himself

if he does not want others to see that picture in his album. Moreover Facebook

provide the limited profile feature that allowed a member to list some of his friends

in a separate list and then to adjust the accessibility of the lists members to his

information.



Use of limited profile allows a member to manage what to show to others in Facebook

profile, consequently if a member concern about some information or pictures on Facebook

wall , he can categorize underage members in a separate list and then to adjust their access

to his profile.

The previous assumptions about Facebook and the strategies used by students to protecttheir own profiles lead us to discuss one of the most controversial facilities of Facebook

which is Facebook Beacon and its role in peoples online society.

Facebook usage of members information

Facebook beacon is a service launched by Facebook website in November 2007 enables

members to share their online activities with their friends as a news feeds or social adds. It

might be argued that this initiative allow people to share their activities with their friends

including purchasing, it allow websites (like Fandago and blockbuster) to send details about

customers who visited these websites to Facebook, which will be then displays to a

members friends. While that was stated in Facebook policy, customers complained when

they discovered what Facebook practice with the other websites visited by Facebook

members. The argument raised is the right of Facebook to use customers information to

share with a third party. The service ended due to customer complains in September 2009

(Tavani 2009). But the question members still ask that: does Facebook sell or share

customers information to another affiliates or for marketing purposes?.

Appendix (1) shows the Facebook iceberg model . the model displays the visible part of the

iceberg which represent 1/8 of the overall usage of members information. The visible part

shows a social networking and interactions between members .Meanwhile, the invisible

part of the iceberg contents of a massive warehouse built by a voluntarily data aggregation

and members activities used for commercial and marketing. Facebook was criticised of

abusing its members privacy more than once, the watchdog organization Privacy

International ranked Facebook in2007 the second in the bottom just before Google. This

ranking mainly based on the unauthorised usage of customers data and transfer it to

another companies also the managers of Facebook admitted recently that it use members

information to be transferred for other allies for advertisements and marketing purposes

(ABC 2010). Facebook profiles could be downloaded by a regular user using a simple

algorithm because the website used predictable URLs for its pages. In addition, Facebook

used other sources to collect information about its members automatically unless a memberopt out. Facebook asserted that the opt out facility in no more active but the data

aggregation still utilized by Facebook(Debatin et al 2009).

Further criticism about Facebook is allowing third parties to mining Facebook data

warehouse including the access to a sensitive personal information which might be used by

a thief to know members Social security number for American community (which contents

of a five digit postcode, gender and date of birth) through the information of users which



y Encourage parents role on children online societies. 65 % of parents observing their

kids profiles on social network societies. Applying a kind of monitor y help parent to

avoid unwanted materials to be posted on kids profiles.

Bibliography

BC News 2010, F acebook admits privacy breach, ABC 19th October,

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/10/19/3042594.htm . Last accessed: December2010.

Brown J., Duguid P.(1991), Organisational Learning and Communitiesf-Practice, Org. Sci.

2,1 (1991), 40-57.

Debatin B., Lovejoy J., Horn A., Hughes B. (2009), Facebook and Online Privacy, Attitudes,

Behaviours and Unintended Consequences, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication ,

15 (2009) 83 -108 International Communication Association.

Freeman (1979), Centrality in Social Networks, Conceptual Clarification, Social Networks, 1,3

(1979), 215-239.

Gross R, Acquisti A. (2005), Information Revelation and Privacy in Online Social Networks. In

Proceeding of the 2005 ACM workshop on privacy in the electronic society.

Jones, H., Soltren J.H. (2005), Facebook threats to privacy student paper. DOI=

http://swiss.ai.mit.edu/6095/student -papers/fall05-papers/facebook.pdf . last accessed

12th DEC. 2010.

Lampe C., Ellison N., Steinfield C. ( 2006), A Face(Book) In The Crowd, Social Searching Vs.

Social Browsing. In Proceeding Of the 2006 20th

Anniversary Conference on Computer

Supported Cooperative Work (Banff, Alberta, Canada) ACM Press 167 170.

Malhotra N., Kim S., Agarwal J. (2004), Internet Users Information Privacy Concerns (IUIPC),

Information Systems Research 15, 4,(2004) 336 -355.

Nov O., Wattal S. (2009), Social Computing Privacy Concerns: Antecedents & effects, CHI

April 2009, Boston MA, USA.



Romano, A. (2006), Face books news feed, Newsweek . Retrieved October 2008 from :

http://www.newsweek.com/id/45681.Last accessed 17 Dec. 10 2010.

Tavani H., T. (2009), Ethics And Technology: Controversies, Questions And Str ategies For

Ethical Computing, U.S.A John Wiley & Sons Inc.

Tufekci, Z. (2008), can you see me now ?, audience and disclosure regulation in online social

network sites. Bulletin of science. Technology and society 28, 20 (2008), 20 -36.

Viseu A. Clement A. and Aspinall J. (2004), Situating Privacy Online: Complex Perception and

everyday practices . Information, Communication and Society 7,1 2004 92 - 114.

Wasko M., and Faraj S. (2005), Why Should I Share? Examining Social Capital And Knowledge

Contributions, MIS Quarterly, 29, 1 (2005), 35-57

Young A., Quan- Haase A.(2009), Information Revelation And Internet Privacy Concerns on

Social Network Sites : A Case Study of Facebook, C&T June 2009 Pennsylvania USA.

Appendixes

Appendix (1) shows Facebook Iceberg Model (Iceberg Model Image Ralph A. Clevenger /

CORBIS )



Appendix (2) a Facebook members profile has been accessed :



(image source: http://danielfive.com/facebook-design-sucks-facebook-users-facebook/)

e Business Facebook

Documents

Transcript of e Business Facebook