{"id":5117,"date":"2012-07-17T17:09:56","date_gmt":"2012-07-17T17:09:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.intego.com\/mac-security-blog\/?p=5117"},"modified":"2012-12-12T13:55:38","modified_gmt":"2012-12-12T21:55:38","slug":"has-social-networking-pushed-the-boundaries-of-internet-privacy-too-far","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.intego.com\/mac-security-blog\/has-social-networking-pushed-the-boundaries-of-internet-privacy-too-far\/","title":{"rendered":"Has Social Networking Pushed the Boundaries of Internet Privacy Too Far?"},"content":{"rendered":"

We all kinda love Facebook, even though many of us hate to admit it. The social networking behemoth is integrating with everything else on the web, bit by bit, whether we like it or not. And they\u2019re not the only site doing this\u2014what a lot of Internet users still fail to realize is that for social networking sites, the users are their product. Everything we like, everything we enter on partnered websites, we need to consider it public information because it is of value to those sites and their advertisers.<\/p>\n

There have been two particularly galling examples of the lack of privacy on Facebook recently:<\/p>\n

1. Exploiting Our \u201cLikes\u201d<\/h3>\n

With no particular rhyme or reason as to which page is chosen, Facebook has been putting posts in people\u2019s newsfeed from pages that a user Likes<\/a>. It could be a page that you Liked months ago that you may not even remember is in your list. Most of us at one point or another have probably Liked pages that might displease a coworker, friend or relative. For some of us, this might not actually be a problem. But for others it could cause embarrassment or even worse. Oh, you didn\u2019t mean to out your political affiliation, your sexual orientation or maybe your questionable musical taste? Too bad, that\u2019s just not in the advertisers\u2019 best interest.<\/p>\n

This is a more prominent extension of the sidebar item that tells us which of our friends have Liked pages we too might like. The main difference with this new action is that to those people not looking closely, it might appear that the friend in question has actually shared the article Facebook is posting on the friends\u2019 behalf.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\n On Facebook, we can see your Likes in the sidebar…<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\" <\/a>
\n…and now we see shared posts from your Likes in the newsfeed.<\/em><\/p>\n

The newsfeed is supposed to be just about things that we intentionally post. This latest action changes that. We can no longer trust that what shows up in our newsfeed is content that has been knowingly generated by a person. It could be posted by an advertising-bot that has no concern for what might be considered private information.<\/p>\n

2. Trumpeting Our Personal Information<\/h3>\n

The second instance has to do with Glassdoor<\/a>, a site that is integrated with Facebook. Ostensibly Glassdoor relies on anonymous salary and company-related information from its users, but when its data is correlated with Facebook friend lists, it could be revealing more information than anyone intended. What is not \u201cPersonally Identifiable Information\u201d by itself becomes far more so when it\u2019s paired with the right bit of context.<\/p>\n

Most of us consider salary talk taboo. I could count on one hand the number of people who I have told how much money I make, and I\u2019d still have several fingers left over. And yet, people are posting this information \u201canonymously\u201d online. I understand, from a certain perspective, why this is useful and for a greater good. But would people be doing it if they realized how easily this information could be tracked back to them when a friend list is associated with their data? It behooves a company, if they want people to keep sharing anonymously, to better protect their users\u2019 privacy.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nSign into Glassdoor with Facebook…<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\n…and see your Facebook connections.<\/em><\/p>\n

Regardless of how locked down and protected we keep our settings, social networking sites contain people who we know to varying degrees. For any number of reasons, most of us don\u2019t wish to share every detail of our lives with everyone we connect with on the Internet, even if that person is a very close friend. The Intertubes are leaky; this is a fact of life. It may be accidental because someone made a mistake, or it may be entirely intentional because a company\u2019s privacy practices are shady. Either way, we need to be aware that what we\u2019re sharing may not be as private as we think.<\/p>\n

It certainly decreases the value of being able to freely express ourselves on social networking sites if we have to be concerned with what one person can see versus another. But we need to weigh the value<\/em> of sharing in light of this lack of privacy.<\/p>\n

If you do wish to reign in that privacy a little bit longer, here are a couple tips:<\/p>\n