In an earlier post I mentioned the issue of privacy online and how we are happily giving away every detail about ourselves online, which isn’t always a good thing. As this is my final reflective blog post for my Digital Communications Strategies unit and I can talk in more detail about any of the subjects which I have looked at so far, I have decided to look into the issue of privacy in more detail as it was the subject that I found the most interesting and a little worrying!
The subject of “cookies” is interesting when it comes to privacy online. “Every site you visit can place a "cookie" on your hard drive which will record a few crumbs of information about you” ( Valentine, 2009) These cookies make it easy for websites and brands to advertise their products on various different websites that they know their consumers use . They keep track of what you’ve bought and how much you’ve spent and will use this information when trying to encourage you to buy more products that are similar. This is all well and good advertising to you things that the companies and websites think are of interest to you but they haven’t actually asked your permission to store information about you.
A study by Privacy International (2007) looked at a number of different companies such as Microsoft and Google to see how effective their privacy practices were. There were twenty parameters which were employed in the analysis. Some of the categories for analysis were; data collection and processing, openness and transparency, data retention and ethical compass. However “it was not always possible to precisely assess a company’s approach in each category” ( Privacy International, 2007) Each category was assessed on a colour band system:
| Privacy-friendly and privacy enhancing |
| Generally privacy-aware but in need of improvement |
| Generally aware of privacy rights, but demonstrate some notable lapses |
| Serious lapses in privacy practices |
| Substantial and comprehensive privacy threats |
| Comprehensive consumer surveillance & entrenched hostility to privacy |
( Privacy International, 2007)
Each company was given a rating in each category and then it was averaged out to get a final score.
Google was scored as being the most “hostile “ to privacy, which Privacy International has noted as being maybe seen as controversial. One of the reasons for Google’s low ranking is “its aggressive use of invasive or potentially invasive technologies” ( Privacy International, 2007)
Google were involved in a big scandal in several countries last year after it admitted that “it’s street view mapping cars had inadvertently collected browsing information over wireless networks, although it says it is highly unlikely that any of the data would be useful” ( Beaumont, 2010)
The article also talks about people’s concerns over their Facebook accounts, as the site was thought to be “tinkering with privacy settings, which has made more personal information publicly visible by default” ( Beaumont, 2010) However there are a number of controls which you can change in your individual account settings , but they are automatically set to everything being public unless you physically change it yourself.
Another scandal surrounding Facebook and privacy issues was in July 2009, “An online security consultant who wished to highlight the social networking site's privacy issues published a list of data taken from more than 100million users' profiles” (Quigley, 2010)
The file was downloaded by a lot of people but Facebook claimed that the information was “already freely available” (Quigley, 2010) They also said that people” own their own information and have the right to share only what they want, with whom they want and when they want” ( Quigley, 2010)This claim says that it is up to the users of Facebook as to who sees their private information but this isn’t the case. This could be seen as Facebook trying to shift the blame for the information being readily available to the public, which isn’t good PR for the brand. This shows that with the popularity of Facebook increasing and the things you can do on Facebook increasing, they may have allowed the website to become more lax on security . “Facebook’s frequent modifications, designed to maximize both the level of interaction (and engagement) and thus the amount of data that can be captured and used” ( Andrejevic, 2011). As a Facebook user myself I regularly go into my privacy settings to check they are all correct and that I’m not sharing any personal information with anyone who I am not friends with. However, there are plenty Facebook users who don’t check their settings and then wonder why they can be contacted by people they aren’t friends with or by advertisers. According to an ABC News article “ Facebook acknowledged a problem with its site that reveals your name and names of your Facebook friends to some advertisers, and potentially tracks the websites you visit online” ( Worley, 2010) This relates back to what Valentine said about how cookies work, storing information from websites that people visit. This video relates to how information is being shared through social networking.
http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Consumer/facebook-privacy-scandal-facebooks-watergate/story?id=11912201 ( on the previous post)
The issue of privacy will always be around where online advertising and especially social networks are concerned. There will continue to be scandals and news stories claiming that people’s data isn’t safe online and personal details have been leaked. The privacy policies that are in place aren’t always clear to users on what is and isn’t being shared with the public and third parties, to minimise worries in the future about privacy online, the policies could maybe be made clearer and easier for people to understand. In my opinion there are more and more reasons to worry about privacy online, with the increasing amount of time people are spending online; shopping, studying, social networking they are at more risk of their private details being shared. The amount of times we enter our card details online without thinking twice is worrying, we don’t know who those details are going to be shared with. But with this in mind, will we actually think about this next time we buy a CD from Play.com? No, in all honesty we probably won’t!
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References:
Andrejevic, Mark. 2011. Surveillance and Alienation in the Online Economy. Surveillance & Society 8(3):278-287. Available from: http://www.surveillance-and-society.org/ojs/index.php/journal/article/view/alienation/alienation [ Accessed 24th April 2011]
Beaumount, C., 2010 Is it really possible to have online privacy in the internet age? Telegraph.co.uk . Available from: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/facebook/7741526/Is-it-really-possible-to-have-online-privacy-in-the-internet-age.html [Accessed 24th April 2011]
Privacy International., 2007 A race to the bottom: Privacy ranking of internet service companies Available from: https://www.privacyinternational.org/article/race-bottom-privacy-ranking-internet-service-companies [Accessed 24th April 2011]
Quigley, D., 2010 Facebook privacy fears for 100m users as their personal details are published on file sharing site Mail Online Available from: http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2010/07/29/article-1298600-0A9CBB5F000005DC-256_468x353.jpg [ Accessed 24th April 2011]
Valentine, M., 2009 Big Brother is watching you! Privacy issue online Website 101 Available from: http://website101.com/small-business/big-brother-watching-privacy-issues-online/ [Accessed 24th April 2011]
Worley, B., 2010 Facebook: Another privacy scandal ABC News Available from: http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Consumer/facebook-privacy-scandal-facebooks-watergate/story?id=11912201 [Accessed 24th April 2011]
