Internet sites and social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Whatsapp, LinkedIn, among others, have created new revolutionary ways to communicate, socialize, and interact. Other powerful mobile and web-based applications have also been developed for almost every social aspect of human life: From Uber, which helps users to get a taxi and commute hustle free, to Tinder, which enables users to find dates and lovers within a specified geographic location.
These social sites and mobile apps have become increasingly popular as they enable users to create or add new content to connect and to share a wide variety of information. However, it’s no surprise that there have been several high profile breaches of privacy and security on most of these sites, given the rising popularity of the online tools and the astronomical amount of personal data that is shared across the networks.
Milne & Culnan (2011) explain that privacy issues involve unwarranted access of personal information such as surveillance of one’s real-time location, a gathering of personal information such as financial data or credit card information, and other personal data. On the other hand, a security breach occurs when a hacker or group of hackers gain control of a site and use it for malicious purpose.
Study shows that most people are indeed concerned over the protection of personal information by popular internet channels, social media platforms, and various mobile communication tools. Yet, even with all the skepticism surrounding the cons of sharing personal data, many users of these online tools still post tons of pictures, sensitive private data and personal information on their profiles without batting an eye. Therefore, there is always the question of who should really be held accountable for over-sharing of personal information.
True, most social networking sites have demonstrated an effort to protect the personal information of its users. For example, Google Plus, Twitter, and Facebook have privacy settings that users can apply to limit the content and information that is available to the public or to other users in the network.
However, few people recognize the need to enable the settings and have little knowledge of how to run their own network security. Again, the potential of privacy breach is actually built into the system framework of most of these social sites. Blakeman & Karen (2010) explain that features that allow users to send messages to share photos, and open third-party platform applications are often the avenues that are used to gain access to people’s private information.
In the year 2014, for example, Adrienne Felt exposed a potentially devastating weakness in Facebook’s Application Programming Interface (API). The Ph.D. candidate at Berkeley made headlines after she exposed that the systematic framework of Facebook had a potential privacy breach that allows third-party applications on Facebook to access far more user information than is needed.
Felt and her co-researchers showed that the flaws in Facebook’s API made the system almost indefensible. What is more striking, however, is that even after this API flaw was exposed, the social networking giant only changed the wording of user agreement but did nothing technically to secure users from third party applications.
The video messaging application company Snapchat has also been exposed for violating customers’ privacy. Forbes reported that photos could, in fact, be retrieved with minimal technical knowledge, against the claims by the company that no actual content was stored and that all data disappears after a short interval.
The Electronic Privacy Information Center filed a complaint in 2013 after exposure by Forbes on how the company deceived customers to believe that the content they submitted via the application was destroyed within seconds of viewing. Snapchat was found responsible for a security breach involving 4.6 million customers. On May 7th, 2014, the company settled for 20 years of privacy monitoring with the Federal Trade Commission.
Another high profile privacy breach that has been reported in the recent past involves the American international transportation network company Uber. In a report that was tabled before the senate in November 2014, the Chairman of the United States Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on privacy expressed concerns about Uber’s disregard for customer privacy. The chairman’s letter exposed how the company’s practices were inconsistent with the stated policy. The report further exposed how the international transport network company condoned the use of customer’s data for questionable and illegitimate purposes.
The report followed similar revelations about internal misuse of customer’s data, especially the use of a feature referred to as “God View’ that allowed the employees to track real-time movement of customers. In addition, the aforementioned surveillance feature was misused by Uber’s employees to track politicians and journalists. The revelations indicate that Uber was not only breaching privacy but was also in violation of both the federal and state privacy laws governing the handling of personal information.
Clearly, increasing the use of the internet can be advantageous, and social media networks are great fun and revolutionary channels of interacting. However, it is important to realize that these exciting tools are ultimately contributing to the diminution of individual privacy. Gazelah & Mark (2013) explains that internet experts agree that with the rise of social media, privacy no longer exists.
References
Blakeman, C., & Karen, M. (2010). What Internet and Search Engines Know About you. American Journal of Online Users, 101 (1), 96.
Gazelah, B., & Mark, H. (2013).Protecting Consumer Privacy in Era of Rapid Change. American Journal of Consumer Affairs, 20(1), 102.
Milne, S., & Culnan, G. (2011).Strategies for Reducing Online Privacy Risks. The Journal of Online Business, 10(2), 78.