Identity, Privacy & Security

Face book

It is assumed that face book users particularly the younger users are not concerned about privacy and security issues. This may be because face book is so widely used however does not ensure privacy within a list of friends or at times friends of friends (allowing 'creeping').

Raynes Goldie's (2010) research suggests that young face book users are concerned with social privacy rather than institutional privacy and that people reconcile their use of the social networking tool with their privacy concerns through because of the social benefits and online identity it gives them, they do however use certain techniques to protect their privacy such as:

- cleaning their wall regularly
- using only part of their real name (although real names are required in the ToS)
- using alias's
- not including mobile phone numbers etc in profile

The article discusses the shift from privacy concerned which in the last generation were focused on the informational privacy that institutions offered to the protection of personal profiles (social privacy). This has arisen due to the transparency and openness of the online social structure of creating and maintaining identities that are networked throughout the web.

There is a belief that people are concerned about their welfare but are willing to trade it for the value of being able to connect through the Internet. I think this has a great impact on the generalisation that the new generation is more open and less guarded or carefree about their privacy.

We accept terms these days because we want to get on with things. Every kind of web platform used comes part and parcel with its own set of guidelines and terms of agreements, do we read them? if we don't accept then we are not able to participate. Is this accepting under duress? Well, that could be said, but the fact remains that the only way to develop privacy and security policies is in the public debate, in the mean time we must accept and get on with it, and deal with security issues in our own way by manipulating the software to protect ourselves.


NB - Raynes-Goldie explains social privacy as access to personal information and institutional privacy as institutional privacy as how the company (face book) uses that information.

Raynes-Goldie, K. (2010), Aliases, creeping, and wall cleaning: Understanding privacy in the age of Facebook, First Monday, 15 (1), 4 January. http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2775/2432