Defining privacy in Facebook age
Source: Victoria Ison
Major changes to Facebook could be coming this week with the anticipated release of Timeline, a dramatic new profile that allows users to share more information about each part of their lives, including updates from months or years past.
But the days prior to the feature's release have been difficult for Facebook. First, lawmakers inquired yet again into accusations about the site's data collection and privacy policies.
Early this year, Australian security consultant Nik Cubrilovic blogged about his discovery that Facebook runs cookies on its users' computers even when they've logged out and collects information about users when they visit outside sites that have Facebook ‘like' buttons, Australia's SkyNews reported.
Facebook responded by saying that the cookies are installed strictly for security purposes and that the information they collect is never sold or used to target advertising.
Some U.S. lawmakers aren't satisfied.
"We believe that tracking users without their knowledge or consent raises serious privacy concerns," Reps. Edward Markey and Joe Barton wrote in a letter to the Federal Trade Commission Friday. "When users log out of Facebook, they are under the impression that Facebook is no longer monitoring their activities. We believe this impression should be the reality."
Markey (D-Mass.) and Barton (R-Texas) are co-chairmen of the Bipartisan Privacy Caucus, Markey's website stated. The lawmakers are joined in their cause by privacy groups such as the Electronic Privacy Information Center, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Digital Democracy that have also petitioned the FTC to look into the matter.
It remains to be seen how the FTC will respond to the invitations to investigate.
Shaheen Borna, a marketing professor at Ball State who recently published a 34-page academic paper on privacy in the business world, said privacy is a hard thing to define.
"Scholars try and it's extremely difficult," Borna said. "The concept itself is difficult. Anytime you come up with one definition you can raise another problem with that."
Freshman Natalie Abell said that cookies or not, privacy is one thing she wasn't finding in her day-to-day usage of Facebook. That's why she deactivated her account.
"If you have a Facebook account, you can see exactly what's going on in everyone's lives and you don't realize everyone else can do that too," Abell said. "I think people are genuinely nosy. I don't like that; I don't like that they can nose around people they never talk to in person."
Even the new Timeline feature isn't enough to keep Abell using Facebook.
"The people that I really talk to I instant message or Skype or call," Abell said, "In a way I think Facebook is kind of sad because it reduces communication to just digital forms and you miss out on phone calls and face to face conversation."
Still, 800 million people are using Facebook �C and that number is growing every day. Timeline's innovation promises to bring to the site more curious first-time users and has the potential to change online privacy in a different way.
"Probably all the information [that would be on your Timeline] would be on your Facebook anyway," said freshman Nick Rieth, telecommunications major. "But now Facebook is organizing it and putting it in the public view, if you choose to let it."
Rieth said that while he's not an incredibly active Facebook user, he is interested in seeing how Timeline will be received. He also said users' online privacy, at least in terms of what their friends know about them, is about controlling what information they share.
"By signing up for Facebook you have to understand that your privacy could be encroached upon by being a member," Rieth said. "The goal of Facebook is not to steal your life and put it out there. It's up to you what you put online."
Timeline aims to allow users to share not only what they've put online recently, but also information about all their interactions since the day they joined Facebook.
But the advent of the new profile has been complicated by Timelines, Inc, a company whose website allows users to create their own websites chronicling and sharing personal and public history.
Time Magazine reported Saturday that Timelines has entered into a lawsuit against Facebook, alleging that the new profile is too similar to the company's own website and could put Timelines out of business.
It's unsure when Timeline will officially be open to the public, but it's unlikely to be sooner than Thursday. Currently Facebook's new profile is only available to developers and those that seek it out and sign up for it.
A Timeline profile will appear drastically different from the current version. It includes a "cover" users can use to fill the screen with a photo that defines them. The user's name and regular profile picture are found beneath the cover photo alongside their work, network and education information.
A user's recent activity, photos, friends, likes and check-ins each get their own visually-heavy space on the profile beneath the traditional status update function and "wall."
There's space on the new profile for memorable wall posts, status updates, or relationships from any time in users' Facebook histories that they've chosen to "star" and emphasize.
At the bottom of the profile, in the apps section, users can share the movies they're watching, the music they're listening to, or the games they're playing.
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