User:Cpsc203-w09

Facebook: Privacy Unleashed
Group: 02

Jaime Chung, Jessica Rice, Nicole Schrier, Jean Hok, Jillian Galeos

Lecture: CPSC 203 L02 Dr.Eberly

Tutorial: 11 I. Sadi

Project Information
Project Name: Facebook: Privacy Unleashed

Project Purpose: Facebook is one of the fastest growing world-wide social networking websites. There are over 175 million users but how many of these users know the real risks they are putting onto this website? Our mission with this project is to inform people of the hidden games Facebook is playing with our personal information.

What is Facebook?
Facebook is a social networking website. It is an online community that brings people from around the world together. It encourages meeting new people and staying connected with friends. As stated on the site, “Facebook's mission is to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected.”

Join the Craze
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As the second most visited social network website on the internet, Facebook is easy to join. Facebook currently has over 175 million users. Using Facebook is free and the website is available to users 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. When first signing up you have to provide a valid email address along with things such as where you work, where you went to school and where you live. Also you have to approve to Facebook's terms of use policy. One thing that Facebook's terms of use policy requires is for the user to be above 13 years old, however most people do not read these terms of use policy but rather just scroll down to approve and thus they have no idea what terms they have to meet. Once you fill in your information about yourself, Facebook creates a profile which you use to interact with other people.

Mechanics of Facebook
Facebook allows social networking through creating a profile and once your profile has been created you can add other Facebook members as your “friend.” By adding these members it allows them to view your profile and any changes that you may make to it along with providing a way of communication. There are three ways to add “friends” on Facebook. You can search networks, which are sorted into regions, colleges, workplaces, and high schools, which takes information that you fill in and finds people Facebook thinks you might know because their responses to the information given was the same. You can allow Facebook access to your email account for them to compare email addresses from your contacts in your email to email addresses given by users and allows you to add them as a “friend.”  Finally, you can use the Facebook search engine which allows you to type in an individual’s name and Facebook will scan profiles for names that match your search.

Although Facebook is a social networking site, it also provides many different features. A person's unmodified profile contains a profile photo, which is viewable by anyone who searches your name, a “friend” list, which shows who you have added as a “friend”, shared personal information such as relationship status and birthday, a “mini-feed” section which shows people viewing your profile what you have been up to recently, a “wall” which allows people to write messages for you and your “friends” to see, and a news feed which shows what your “friends” have been up to.

Applications are another feature of Facebook. When you first create your profile you are automatically given applications which Facebook has created. These applications are photos, video, groups, events, marketplace, posted items and gifts. The photo application allows you to upload photos to share with people who view your profile and you can also “tag” your “friends” in the photo which allows the photo to be visible on their profile as well. The video application works like the photo application but using videos instead. If you are interested in a certain topic and want to share with others, you can create a group in which any Facebook member can join if they share your same interest. If a Facebook user is having a gathering in person and does not want to call all of their friends they can create an event on Facebook and invite any other Facebook user to this event and the Facebook users will be notified they have been invited the next time they log on. They then can share their attendance status. Marketplace allows users to view or post items for buying or selling and leaves the sales up to the users. The posted items application allows users to enter in another webpage’s URL for their “friends” to view if they chose to. The gifts application allows users to send virtual gifts to each other; however this application comes at a cost. If a member chooses to send a gift, it will cost them $1 which must be paid with a credit card. Facebook members can also create other applications to share with each other such as games, quizzes, etc. However, these applications are not automatically added to your profile and instead you have to search them and allow them access to your profile.

Popularity
In 2004 Facebook was created, and it had already reached nearly one million users in that year. However, by January 2009, the number of Facebook users had multiplied to 150 million users. Facebook had gained another 25 million more users after another month. The popularity of Facebook is increasing by the minute.

Facebook enables it’s users to communicate worldwide to friends and family members with a click of a button. Worldwide, more than 3 billion minutes are spent on Facebook every day. The easy access of Facebook is a key factor for its huge popularity. Core functions and applications of Facebook allow users to keep in touch with friends, share photos, and allow for real time updates on personal events. The fact that more than 18 million users update their status at least once each day shows how popular and convenient Facebook really is. Also, Facebook has more than 35 translations accessible on the site, with more than 60 in progress, which makes it easier to communicate and keep in touch with people all around the world. Facebook also allows users to find friends that they may have lost touch with, without the need for an email address. In general, Facebook’s applications allow fast and easy communication which explains its worldwide appeal.

Statistics
http://www.techshout.com/images/social-networking-sites.jpg Currently, according to their website, Facebook has more than 175 million active users. Despite what many people many think, the fastest growing demographic is people that are 35 years old and older. According to the statistics from March 2009, the top three countries that have the most users include; the United States with 55,329,460 users, the United Kingdom with 17,765,160 users, and Canada with 11,655,980 users. The bulk of users are between the ages of 16 and 25 in the United States. Along the same range, in Canada the bulk of users are between the ages of 19 and 25. However, users from the ages of 25 and 35 are not far behind. In Canada, there are more women than men on Facebook, 5.6 vs. 4.2 million, according to the figures from December 2008.

Advantages of using Facebook
Facebook is very efficient and easily accessible. That is its primary advantage. It can be beneficial in several ways – socially and personally.

Friends
•	Facebook is a gateway to meeting new people: through friends, joining social group applications, etc. •	Users can get regular updates on friends via status updates, profile information, news-feed and mini-feed. It is a resourceful way to learn more about friends as well, making it quick and simple.

•	You can recap and share good memories by means of videos, photos, notes, etc.

•	Users can easily stay connected with friends from all over the world. It is a convenient way of staying in touch for geographically-challenged friends.

Personal Level
•	Users can express their feelings and thoughts using the Notes application as an online blog/digital diary.

•	The Events application is used to easily inform friends about specific upcoming events (ex. birthday parties) and allows you to be aware of how many attendees there are.

•	Profile Wall’s are like digital sticky notes that can be used to leave quick messages.

Miscellaneous
•	There is an application that helps to inform you on numerous local and global events. This keeps you updated on important events such as: birthdays, workshops, local shows, etc.

•	There is a large variety of social groups you can join as well. You can support a cause (ex. Green party), join because you are a fan (ex. A dance group), join groups that you were already part of (ex. Your old junior high), etc.

•	Facebook also provides advertisement or group pages where you can buy or sell items of your choice. This is a convenient way to promote and look for your selected items.

•	Gamers can also benefit since the site provides different game applications as well.

Disadvantages of using Facebook
Facebook has recently become very successful as a social network, thanks to its wide array of facilities that it provides. Those facilities however have also created a series of problems that put facebook user’s privacy into jeopardy since more individuals nowadays are getting exposed to social networks.

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Easy access to private information
Unsurprisingly, one of the returning problems in social networking is the stalking factor. The stalking problem is not only limited to sexual predators lurking on the net but it has also become a new problem involving individuals doing things such as collecting or gathering another person’s property and information through the Facebook applications. Such behaviour in our society is considered unacceptable. Over the net, people believe that their actions cannot be monitored and thus, tend to do freely as they please. Since Facebook never displays who visited your page, sexual predators are no longer the only problem. Any individual you may have associated with in your life may attempt to obtain information about you.

Impact on one’s image
Related to the last issue, privacy problems have emerged as more individuals become more aware of facebook. The younger individuals, such as students, have their privacy exposed to the world from just about anything, including sharing photos. This can also easily involve the older population of facebook users in their job career. Since more people are obtaining facebook nowadays, it is very likely that employers are using it as well. Some employers may even use facebook to know their employees before even meeting them in person. This can easily sabotage one’s first impression to the employer and lead the employee to assume that their Facebook page portrays an actual image of themselves. Aside from employers, closer individuals such as parents or relatives tend to verify Facebook to check up on their relatives.

A distraction from our daily lives
As students and workers got more acquainted to Facebook, more schools and work places have blocked its access to their computer users. The facebook users have a tendency to browse through facebook all day despite having a workload on their hands. This results in poor production at the workplace and clear signs of grade decline at school. Although Facebook is meant to give an opportunity for people to share their lives with others, some use it as a distraction from their usual daily work routine. The Facebook network itself isn’t time consuming but the issue comes from the users who decide to make it that way. It is very similar to video games in a sense that it gets the computer users attention and causes them to cut down on their daily productivity.

Legal Rights
Facebook has designed a “terms of use agreement” that each user must accept before activating their account. Studies show most users do not bother to read the agreement. They skip to the bottom and accept without proper knowledge of what they have agreed to. Once you have accepted their terms you have to abide by everything that is stated in the contract.

Once you have activated your account Facebook has complete legal rights to everything you post on your profile. It declared Facebook has the right to change the contract as many times as they want in whichever way they desire. This means you have no control over what Facebook can do after you have accepted the version of the “terms of use agreement” you saw when your account was created. Basically by accepting these terms you are allowing Facebook to determine the fate of your privacy, because they have the ultimate control. The contract states “We reserve the right, at our sole discretion, to change, modify, add, or delete portions of these Terms of Use at any time without further notice.”

You may find the “terms of use agreement” at: http://www.facebook.com/terms.php

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Property Rights
Everything you do on Facebook becomes permanent. You cannot take back your actions because once they are submitted they are no longer yours to take back. Anything written or posted on facebook becomes the physical property of Facebook. In the legal contract it states “All content on the Site and available through the Service, including designs, text, graphics, pictures, video, information, applications, software, music, sound and other files, and their selection and arrangement (the "Site Content"), are the proprietary property of the Company, its users or its licensors with all rights reserved.” This means you cannot control the fate of your cyber actions. This causes several unwanted future possibilities. Facebook may release anything to anyone at anytime. This can cause severe damage in many areas such as employer requests, media requests, etc.

Facebook can also modify, terminate, or suspend your Facebook page in any way they desire. You may be storing important information such as photos, important dates, contact information and work related projects which can be deleted at any time. Your page may be modified in an undesirable way that completely changes your perception to others. A good example of this is the name change feature. A member changed their name as a joke. They are now prohibited from changing it back to their real identity. This has caused problems in several areas that impact their life. Classmates, friends, and other associates cannot use their usual fast and effective method to contact him because they cannot find him. This strips the individual of all the important notifications people are trying to give to him.

When using Facebook you may not think twice about the information you are putting on your profile. When you post or upload content the site makes copies of this information. It is then put into their storage system. This is a direct example of how they will always have access to your personal content. This horrifying concept is also outlined in the “terms of use agreement.” “By posting User Content to any part of the Site, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to the Company an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such User Content for any purpose, commercial, advertising, or otherwise, on or in connection with the Site or the promotion thereof, to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such User Content, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing. You may remove your User Content from the Site at any time. If you choose to remove your User Content, the license granted above will automatically expire, however you acknowledge that the Company may retain archived copies of your User Content.”

Privacy
Facebook tries to appear as though you have control over the security of your page. The truth is you never have complete authority over your personal profile. Facebook designed a feature called “Privacy settings” which allows you to set who is authorized to view your page. It gives you an extent of privacy. However, you cannot control who posts photos of you on their page, and who they allow to view their personal content. This means that you could have been photographed in ways you wish not to be exposed to other individuals. “You post User Content (as defined in the Facebook Terms of Use) on the Site at your own risk.” “You understand and acknowledge that, even after removal, copies of User Content may remain viewable in cached and archived pages or if other Users have copied or stored your User Content.” However Facebook does provide information regarding their privacy firewall. They protect and store all your information on a server that is protected. This sounds promising to users and provides a sense of security. But how secure is the internet? How many viruses make it past firewalls every day? It is possible to obtain secure information from anywhere. This is out of facebook’s control. They do not mention this precaution in their policies. They want to seem as a safe and reliable environment to attract as many users as possible.

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Identity Theft
Although Facebook seems safe, it has been proven your identity is at risk. A BBC technology program CLICK has successfully stolen a Facebook user’s identity. They were able to commit identity theft from a “protected” Facebook page. They made a fake profile of a young man named Bob Smith. They set his privacy setting to only authorize viewer content to his friends. They entered Facebook again as a different user and without viewing his complete profile, were able to obtain his name, hometown, school, interests and photograph. The BBC technology created a special Facebook application. The immense amount of applications is one of the main reasons Facebook is so popular. The scary part is anyone who has a basic level of computer web programming can create an application. BBC’s application appeared to be a fun quiz. However, behind the scenes it was stealing the personal information of the application user’s profile. It even gained access to personal details of their friends. This information was then sent to BBC’s inbox.

There are hundreds of different applications available on Facebook. Since the applications run on a different severs it makes it hard for Facebook to comprehend the prime purpose of each application. This means you could be at risk at anytime without you knowing.

Privacy Lawsuits against Facebook
There have been several lawsuits filed against Facebook over privacy issues. Here are some key examples

1.	The fight continues: Facebook sued for violating Privacy of Users with “Beacon" Program

2.	CIPPIC Launches Privacy Complaint Against Facebook

The Facts
Having personal information available on the internet is never a good idea, especially if your profile is public. Anyone can create profiles using fake information with unknown intentions. It is widely known that there are many convicted sex offenders on Facebook. Another scary fact is that Facebook is also a haven for criminals to try to scam users for money. Since scammers have access to personal information of various users, scamming becomes particularly effective. There is also a huge amount of unsuitable content that can be found on Facebook, including personal photos. Myspace has hired people to look over every single picture that is posted to make sure the content is appropriate. On the other hand, Facebook does not, it relies on its users to flag any inappropriate content found on the website. Relying mainly on the public to flag unsuitable content is a major flaw in Facebook because it is not aggressive enough and content can be easily slipped through. Uneducated users are one of the biggest defects about Facebook. The hard part is ensuring everyone is educated and informed about online safety.

What Can Change
Facebook has already announced that they will implement new policies to remove any unsuitable content and to present safety tips in plain sight. But, even on Facebook’s website they state that they have implemented new safety and policy controls to help identify and remove any inappropriate content but that it cannot guarantee that Facebook can be free entirely of inappropriate content. Facebook needs to hire staff to look over pictures that people upload, especially pictures that are uploaded by minors. With a combination of flagging and staff members looking over pictures, unsuitable pictures will decrease dramatically. Just like Facebook stated, it is hard for them to guarantee that Facebook will be completely free of any improper content. There is no way to stop every threat that may come to social network websites. Many users are unaware or naive about online safety which makes it hard to block every threat. One of the best things to do is to educate all users about internet safety.

Conclusion
Although Facebook is a widely used social networking site, many of it's users are unaware of the harsh consequences that are attached to it. There are several advantages that attract users such as easy and efficient communication with people around the world and finding long lost friends. Facebook also presents disadvantages such as online stalking and distraction from our daily lives. Although there are many appealing advantages, your personal safety is at risk. Facebook security is an issue that effects all 175 million members. It has been proven your identity can be stolen through many applications that are created from outside users. Facebook has no control over who can access your profile and steal your information. Several users can extract your information and store it in their personal databases.Facebook attempts to provide each user with personal control over their profile by creating the privacy settings. However, in the end you are never fully protected against online preditors.

REFERENCES: -http://www.facebook.com/terms.php#/policy.php - http://www.facebook.com/terms.php

-http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/click_online/7375772.stm -http://www.binaryfreedom.info/node/331

-http://computer.howstuffworks.com/facebook.htm -http://www.allfacebook.com/

-http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?timeline -http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics -http://www.nickburcher.com/2009/03/facebook-usage-statistics-by-country.html -http://www.nickburcher.com/2008/07/facebook-usa-statistics-us-facebook.html -http://socialmediagroup.com/2008/12/29/december-facebook-statistics-canada/ -http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/02/08/wake-up-call-facebook-isnt-a-safe-haven/ -http://www.facebook.com/safety/