Social Networks Keep Privacy in the Closet Technology Review (06/11/09) Naone, Erica
as it appeared in the June 12, 2009 edition of ACM TechNews.
Social networks are being encouraged to downplay the privacy settings they build because of the tension between the desire to have users share as much personal information as possible and the need to protect that information and restrict how it is shared between users and outside their own borders. Privacy rights groups and activists are pressuring the networks to embed tools for users to control their information, but the networks also have an interest to keep privacy out of users' minds, according to research that will be presented at the Eighth Workshop on the Economics of Information Security. "Their goal is to create a very free-flowing environment where everybody is constantly sharing everything and seeing all this data on other people," says University of Cambridge researcher Joseph Bonneau. "The best way to achieve that is to not bring up the concept of privacy." The researchers studied 45 social-networking sites and determined that more popular sites did better with privacy overall because they face greater pressure to shield user data and also have more resources to address the problem. Bonneau says the disclosure of all sites' privacy practices could help put pressure on major sites to enhance the protection of users' information. Another researcher, Soren Preibusch, speculates that standardizing privacy settings could help users understand and control their information. University of Texas at Austin professor Vitaly Shmatikov is concerned that social networks will exacerbate the situation if they start focusing less on drawing new users and more on reaping profits from the ones they have. View Full Article
