Now, before you dismiss the contents of this post as a "kid's issue," think again. A great number of adults who frequent Facebook could benefit from some of the information and tips that follow. This is the first in a series of posts in which I will examine issues related to Facebook and other social networking sites. In this post, we'll examine some of the privacy issues related to Facebook in particular.
Some Background on Facebook's Privacy Record
Many people presume that because Facebook "limits" who can see your profile that their information and posts are, in some way, protected from prying eyes. Let's examine that premise. by first examining Facebook's track record on the issue of privacy protection.
In recent months various privacy advocates have legally challenged the folks at Facebook for the amount of personal information which is divulged by the service - to other users, to advertisers, and to the world at large.. Canada's Privacy Commissioner was one of the most compelling forces demanding these changes. Their efforts were successful - kind of. In August of last year, Facebook complied with a number of demands of the Privacy Commissioner, in its own peculiar way.
It is true that Facebook did implement changes which satisfied the Privacy Commissioner and which allowed users more control over their personal information and greater ability to restrict others' access to it. However - and this is a BIG however - at the same time that Facebook provided users with this ability they also opened up the default settings for users' accounts so that even more of their information was exposed. In other words, after the changes, unless Facebook users explicitly waded through their account security settings and locked things down to their liking, their accounts were far more open to public scrutiny than they had been before the changes were implemented.
Since then, Facebook has continued to run afoul of privacy advocates in one way or another. Part of the issue, of course, is the fact that, as a social network, openness, or lack of privacy, is in Facebook's interest. Also at play are Facebook's efforts to become a financially viable entity. As wildly popular as Facebook has become, it still struggles to find ways to cash in on that popularity. Providing advertisers with user information is one way for Facebook to turn a profit.
In short, of you are relying on Facebook to protect your privacy, you are ignoring the fact that Facebook has no vested interest in doing so; its interests are best served by keeping the service as open and public as possible.
The Mathematics of Two Degrees of Separation,
OR, Why Facebook is in No Way a Private Forum
For reasons that I find very difficult to comprehend, many people seem to think that when they post status updates, wall messages, images and comments on Facebook that they are somehow in a small, protected "bubble" of privacy limited to their friends. This is a potentially dangerous premise.
Most of the default settings in Facebook allow virtually every piece of information a user posts to be viewed by "friends of friends." I refer to this as Facebook's two degrees of separation.
This principle of two degrees of separation is similar to the examination of word-of-mouth geometric progression made famous by the old Faberge Organic Shampoo commercial in which "They told two friends, and so on, and so on." Let's examine the math behind two degrees of separation. Assume that you have fifty Facebook friends and that each of those people also has fifty facebook friends. Some of those will be overlaps (shared friends) so assume, for our purposes, that each of your friends has ten friends in common with you. That would mean that each of your friends has forty friends you do not share. Most of these you will be entirely unaware of, many will be people you don't know. So, any time you post information to Facebook, there is a mathematical certainty that fifty people will see it, and the mathematical possibility that two thousand (40 x 50) more people could see it as well. And, that assumes that no one among those two thousand and fifty people chooses to forward the information on to others.
How would those two thousand strangers gain access to your Facebook information? Here are some common ways:
- Your friend Sally comments on your status. All Sally's friends will receive a notification of this comment. In the notification is a link, not only to your current status, but to all recent status updates and wall posts.
- You comment on Bill's status. All Bill's friends will see this comment and a link to your profile. If you haven't locked down your photo albums, this will include access to all your photos.
- A friend Cindy sends you good wishes on your trip to some exotic location. All Cindy's friends now know you will not be home for the next two weeks. What if one of Cindy's fifty friends has a predilection for B&E?
The list goes on ...
Am I being paranoid? I don't think so. Recently I was told of an incident in which a Chinook employee made disparaging remarks about his/her employment situation, even going so far as to mention names of people with whom he/she was unhappy. (No names were used in telling me the story, just the outline of the incident.) The naiveté of such a move just stuns me. It reminds me of an incident in a classroom Internet Safety presentation I was giving, when I asked the students how they could be sure that none of their friends was also friends with their teachers. One little girl put up her hand to say, "I'm friends with Mrs. C________" (the teacher in the room at the time). The other students were flabbergasted. You could just see them mentally revisiting their posts, trying to remember what they might have unwittingly divulged to their teacher.
Anyone who is careless enough to comment on his/her employment situation on Facebook may want to consider the fate of these young folks, who were fired from their positions with Farm Boy food stores for comments they made on a Facebook group dedicated to grousing about working at Farm Boy. Still not convinced? Search for Facebook and fired in Google to turn up a host of situations in which Facebook conduct has had a negative impact on employment.
In short, always use this rule of thumb: consider anything you post on Facebook - or any other social networking site for that matter - to be in the public domain. Remember, even if you limit your posts to your "friends," once the post is out there, there is nothing you can do to stop someone who sees it from forwarding it to others. Remember that - unless you have specified otherwise - beside every one of your posts your friends will have a "share" button, which allows them to forward your post to all their friends. If those friends-of-friends choose to comment on that post, then friends-of-friends-of-friends will now see what you posted.
In the next article we will examine what measures you can take to limit the exposure of your Facebook information and interactions.
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