Facebook, the world's largest social network, has reached over 1.44 billion monthly active users worldwide. Facebook collects data on all those who use Facebook age, gender, interests, country of residence etc. As consumer Reports released its annual report on Internet privacy and security, Facebook privacy problems are on the rise.
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Source:http://mashable.com/2013/06/21/facebook-data-breach/#Y_gWcZQvBuqL |
For example, Facebook company has inadvertently exposed 6 million users' phone numbers email and addresses to unauthorized viewers over the past year, the world's largest social networking company disclosed late Friday (Gerry, 2013). In 2012, Facebook began to blame the data leaks on a technical glitch in their massive archive of related information collected from their 1.1 billion users worldwide. Afterward, the Facebook users who were not supposed to have when they downloaded contact data from their list of friends obtained additional information. It seems that Facebook collects more data than our may imagine. For instance, we cannot know that Facebook gets a report every time when you visit a site with a Facebook “Like” button, even if you never click the button, are not a Facebook user, or are not logged in. The problems are on the rise with eleven percent of households using Facebook said they had trouble last year, ranging from someone using their log-in without permission to being harassed or threatened (The projects to 7 million households — 30 percent more than last year). As the customer report, the Facebook provide consumers’ options and tools that place them in control of their information and experience attracted access more than 900 million consumers have voluntarily decided to connect and share on Facebook.
It seems that users can also do more to protect their privacy and security on Facebook. There are several ways for them, costumers should think before them type because even if they delete an account (which takes Facebook about a month), some information can remain in Facebook’s computers for up to 90 days. Moreover, knowing what they cannot protect is also necessary to protect their identity and do not use a photo or use one that doesn’t show your face since their name and profile picture are public. Turning off Tag Suggest because if we would rather not have Facebook automatically recognize your face in photos, disable that feature in our privacy settings. The information will be deleted. Importantly, when we deactivate our account, Facebook retains our profile data, but the account is made temporarily inaccessible. Therefore, deleting an account, on the other hand, makes it inaccessible to us forever. However, it is nice to see that Facebook make efforts to simplify privacy settings and improve security that as well settle allegations from the Federal Trade Commission and submit to independent audits for the next 20 years (Rosa, 2012).
References:
ROSA GOLIJAN, 2012, Facebook privacy problems are on the rise.
Retrieved from: http://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/consumer-reports-facebook-privacy-problems-are-rise-f749990
Published, May 2012, Protect your privacy on Facebook.
Retrieved from: http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/2012/05/protect-your-privacy-on-facebook/index.htm
Resource from:http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/magazine/2012/06/facebook-your-privacy/index.htm(image)