Filed under: aristea, media everyday media | Tags: facebook, surveillance, survey, user
Facebook is a “social utility that connects you to the people around you”. In Facebook a considerable amount of personal data is voluntarily disclosed. Concerns have been expressed about the surveillance mechanisms of Facebook and the implications on user privacy. This post is a small part of paper that examines Facebook as an unsafe place for personal data and how surveillance is naturalized and accepted by its users.
In the paper, I first give a theoretical background of surveillance in modernity and approaches to computerized surveillance today. Then, I give an account of Facebook based on my personal observation and participation. To find out about the privacy issues linked to Facebook, I looked at news stories about the consequences both of the Facebook Beackon and the voluntarily information disclosure. Furthermore, I give an overview of the conspiracy theories linked to Facebook and the cases of users punished due to the use of the data they exposed. In order to understand user perception and responses to Facebook and third-party surveillance, I surveyed Facebook users. The survey, published here, indicated that ‘privacy’ is not a crystallized concept for Facebook users. The paper shows that commercial third-parties aggressively go after private data and that Facebook privacy settings do not protect users from that.
User Perception
Warning about identity theft, in December 2007, a CBC News article mentioned that 60 per cent of people using social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace.Com, post their birth date, while 10 per cent give their home address. Other fragile information include pet’s name and mother’s virgin name (CBC News Canada December 18, 2007). The BBC Watchdog raised concerns about the amount of essential data that are exposed in Facebook. Creating a fake account, they derived enough details from a 23-year-old man to open a bank account and edit a credit card in his name (BBC Consumer October 24, 2007). People in Facebook tend to give to Friends and Networks more information than they do in real life.
In order to understand how Facebook users understand privacy issues, I set up a short online survey of 10 questions for four days. The survey was anonymous and was announced to random Facebook Groups, my Facebook Friends, the Moo and two mailing lists.
Discussion
Of the 100 participants to the survey, 78 use the service daily and 73 were between 18 and 24 years of age, with 74 being students. It is interesting that, while 95 of the respondents use their true name in Facebook, only 2 responded that they are happy to give personal information and 21 responded that they are not happy to give any personal information. This shows that they did not consider their name a vital personal information and that they would negotiate on the information they give. Unlike other social networks where the user can invent a nickname and register with that, Facebook insists that profiles have real names (Facebook Terms of Use 2007). In a question about how much of their personal information is known to companies and governmental or police agencies, 40.2 responded that they thought it was too much which implies that they are aware or speculate third-party data manipulation. It is not made clear by the survey if they are aware that most of the add-on Applications are developed by third parties that require to “know who I am” in order to be added. Such an Application will not install if the user un-ticks the top tick box. A 24.2 of the participants replied that they do not pay any attention to the Terms of Use or privacy settings when they add an Application. Only 11 responded that they would definitely continue using Facebook if they felt that too much of their data was held by Facebook or third-parties.
The survey indicated that many people have never thought about Facebook as an unsafe place and that they do not have a clear idea about privacy. It raises issues such as that of consent and how Facebook gains a silent consent from people who might never read the Terms of Use. “Opting-out” by un-ticking boxes is, however, not what the European Commission’s Working Party on Data Protection approves as consent (Kaye 2007). Another theme the survey raised for me was that, since 92 of the participants use Facebook to keep in touch with their friends and family, it is interesting to look at the changing concept of ‘communication’ and its relationship to the concept of ‘privacy’. For Rosen (cited in Bugeza 2006 ), “people who use networks like Facebook tend to describe themselves like products”while a study that focuses on the benefits of Facebook Friends showed that “online interactions may be used to to support relationships and keep people in contact” (Ellison et al 2007).
Even if Facebook helps users maintain a social capital, it is evident that online interaction with Friends is increasingly an interaction of lifestyle mediated by Applications that have a commercial interest. To explain this view I next introduced issues of data-mining and the Facebook Beackon as well as the public concern about privacy expressed in the mainstream media.
Read In your face part 2: Conspiracy theories and actual cases
Read in your face-part 3: the beackon and data-mining
some Bibliography
-Baudrillard, J.(1997) ‘The End of the Panopticon’ in Brooker, P. And Brooker, W.(eds) Postmodern Afterimages, London:Arnild
-Best, S. and Kellner, D. (1991) Postmodern Theory: Critical Interrogations, London : Macmillan
-Castells, M.(1999)’An Introduction to the Information Age’ in Hugh McKay and Tim Sullivan(eds) Continuity and Transformation, Milton Keynes: Open UP, p. 398-410
-Foucault, M., (1977) ‘Discipline and punish : the birth of the prison’, London : Allen Lane
-Giddens, A. (1985) ‘The nation-state and violence’ in A contemporary critique of historical materialism, V.2 : (pp.31-51)
- Kafka F.(1925) The trial New York : Chelsea House
-Lyon, D., (1993)The Electronic Eye: the rise of surveillance society , Oxford:Polity
-Lyon, D., (2001) Surveillance society : Monitoring everyday life, Milton Keynes: OpenUP
-Lyon, D.,(ed.)(2003)Surveillance as social sorting : privacy, risk, and digital discrimination London : Routledge
- Orwell, G. (1949) Nineteen eighty-four, Harcourt
-Poster, M. (1995) The second media age, Cambridge : Polity Press
-Robins, K. & Webster, F. (1987) ‘Cybernetic Capitalism: Information, Technology, Everyday Life’, in Mosco, V.and Wasko, J. (1988) The political economy of information, Madison : University of Wisconsin Press
-Winseck, D. (2003) ‘Netscapes of Power’ in Lyon, D.,(ed.) Surveillance as social sorting : privacy, risk, and digital discrimination London : Routledge
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“Daddy, what does ‘privacy’ mean?”
“Mummy, what was it like before the panopticon prison-state?”
“Teacher, what was it like to be free, back in the days before Total Information Surveillance (TIA)?”
Mr Totalitarian Government says “It sure was a good idea to have everyone’s movements tracked and traced and kept on a centralised database. Now with our computer profiling we can instantly spot any thought criminal and eliminate them before they even know who they are” “Yes, sure is useful” reply his friends Mr Crook & Mr Businessman.
Comment by It's me but then again, possibly not February 29, 2008 @ 10:07 pmWhat I’d really like to know more about is specifically how the information that a user has inputted into a site like this is being used. I know you mention identity theft, but I was wondering if there are any medium-specific dangers to Facebook as an ‘unsafe’ place?
What did you find out about how users were punished according to the data you expose, as you mention here?
I am one of those people who will perhaps flippantly give out little nuggets of personal information across different sites, aware that I shouldn’t but also unaware of the possible consequences. The most manifest example, off the top of my head, would be Amazon – or Facebook ads – being tailored to what I like or have purchased previously. Whilst this is obviously not an entirely desirable scenario, it could perhaps be read as useful (such as finding out about books similar to those I already know that I may not otherwise have come across, and after all there is no obligation to buy what is advertised to me) or even to be expected (I can use Facebook and so on for free: its got to be funded somehow).
And as a brief PS – do we (in media res) really have to link to vice magazine? surely we don’t want to support that?!
Comment by sam February 29, 2008 @ 11:12 pmsam,
this is a long paper and too long to post on the site, do you think?
do you know of a way so people are able to download it as a pdf?
as for links, please feel free to remove(as an admin) as i felt free to add,
i am not sure that consensus is our aim in ‘in media res’
- i add links just for the sake of pluralism, but yeah,
i also find vice offensive.
as to ‘after all there is no obligation to buy what is advertised to me) or even to be expected’,
Comment by aristea F March 1, 2008 @ 1:51 pmI would say that personalized advertising is very different from advertising in tv or a mag. By being numb in this process of increased personalization of services, as if it is not your problem because you do not fall for it, does not stop the fact that you contribute to increased categorization of people according to buying patterns. This has wider consequences of social segregation. So the cost of using this ‘free’ service is actually much higher than the benefits of it (i mean, email works just fine).
And i dont mean you personally, and of course i hope that this is more clear when you have read the paper.
hmm, i don’t know about the pdf thing. i have problems enough just putting a video into a blog..!
i agree that full papers may be a little too long to post here in full. but could you just summarize what you found in terms of how this data that users input is used by facebook/amazon/the people they (presumably) sell it to?
as a trenchant materialist (!), i’d like to know whether there are any manifestations of inputted data having a negative effect on someone’s life. i appreciate that data like this can be used to construct social categories, but thats been happening, to different degrees, since 1086 with the domesday book. whilst the internet represents a speeding up and increased efficiency of this type of process, i just wonder what the new, specific dangers are.
Comment by sam March 1, 2008 @ 3:54 pmI’ll make this a little series, in the next post I will publish the ‘negative effect on someone’s life’ but in a very condensed form.
But before that, to make this palpable, here’s a scenario: Your facebook account lists your name, address, education, what kind of books you read, what kind of music you listen to, who your real-life-friends are and what your actual connection to them is(events, parties, photos, etc). This is a very elaborate profile. You want to fly to a country outside the EU, for vacation. The new law will allow the air company to scan all your transactions in the past, compare the profile of transactions with the profile they have from your facebook account and from other 3rd parties that sell your data. This profile is ofcourse not you, but a categorization of you, according to stereotypes. Now, according to these stereotypes that would be reductionist and simplistic, you could be regarded as a dangerous person, or one of your friends could be and your vacations could be ruined. That’s not a very unlikely scenario and it is very material. The difference with digital data categories to bureauctratic ones is not just speed, but that they serve as preemptive means and they are constantly updated and very flexible.
Another awful thing would be that, because you have agreed that facebook owns and can sell all the photos you post, one day you see a billboard or bustop advertishment featuring you and your girlfriend for some life insurance or any product.
Another senario would be that you get a stalker(you surely could not get that with the domesday book).
Plus you could loose your job or not even get to be in an interview because your potential employer sees more of your personal life than they are supposed to(and they dont like it).
I could go on but I guess this has convinced you by now.
Comment by aristea F March 3, 2008 @ 12:00 pm