Facebook and privacy

Many of you are on Facebook, and those of you who are familiar with it may have noticed the “news feed” feature that popped up recently. This system compiles all of your actions and adjustments on Facebook and compiles them into a list that is sent to your friends and contacts on Facebook. Upon logging in, you can get a nice digest for everyone’s action over the past week, whether it be a status change or new photos that have gone up or a new friend you added.

The controversy began as people protested loudly that this was an infringement on their privacy, as anyone could see what they were up to on Facebook. A number of people I spoke to described it as creepy, and were uncomfortable with others knowing what they did on the site, and by extension, in real-life. Some people put a surprising amount of info on there; which I’ll get to in a minute.

The flaw in the argument and the reason for Facebook’s delay in retracting this feature is that no new information is being presented that wasn’t there before. The news feed data is compiled only from users on your friends list, and not the world in general. Likewise, only your friends can view your data. Furthermore, the data presented on the news feed is information that was already accessible should someone take the time to check every single profile on their friends list, their groups, photos added, new friends added, etc.

Since many people on Facebook have friends that easily stretch into the dozens, or even hundreds, I believe users feel that they still hold a certain degree of obscurity since only the most dedicated followers (or stalkers) would bother to sift through so much information and spot the changes. What Facebook has done is aggregate all of this info into an easy-to-read page for quick consumption. In an instant I can see what all of my friends have been up to, not because this information was hidden before, but because to access it would be too time consuming for most people. The benefit gained from the data is not worth the time expended for most people.

This is a classic issue in any problem where large amounts of data needs to be sifted through, and Facebook’s solution was remarkable in that it worked so well. Too well. By reducing the effort needed to gather all of this already existing data by orders of magnitude, they broke down a virtual wall, a “perception of privacy” that people had in their belief that the multitude of acquaintances who were granted rights on Facebook for whatever diplomatic reason would not bother to seek such info because it was too hard to get. There was no technical control in place to limit such data, but rather a barrier that existed due to a technological gap and human nature.

I think there is an important lesson to be learned here because there are many such examples where people’s information is publicly available and yet little concern exists. The dark corners of the internet house credit card information and social security #s for anyone willing to put forth the time and effort to find them. Services exist that will trace back people’s cell phone numbers, or look up unlisted landlines. How many times have you written your social security # on an application? The original SS system meant for the number to be private and divulged to no one, and yet today they are hardly state secrets.

Furthermore, I think individuals should take a closer look at what information is available to begin with. I reckon that some people who expressed privacy issues on Facebook had information on there which they did not want to be seen by others. Would it be wrong to consider it unwise to place such data there to begin with?

Personally I would worry more about the individual spending the hours needed to sift through my profile than the multitudes being given a digest on my whereabouts who probably didn’t exhibit any more interest than mild curiosity. But then again, I do not place such information on there to begin with. People who have serious security and privacy concerns with their data should keep such data hidden entirely rather than relying on inconvenience and obscurity as barriers. We need not worry about the casual onlooker, but those with too much time on their hands…