WE ALL KNOW WHAT FACEBOOK DOES WITH OUR DATA
Themes for the Research and Our Aim
The aim of this project was to explore understanding and concern for online privacy of a group of young individuals within a technology related field of study. Our goal was to challenge what they think they know and make the gaps in their knowledge apparent. By showing them how much information they share with the public we aimed to encourage the respondents to act and guard their information more effectively by restricting access to it.
Research carried out by Jones and Soltren laid the foundation for this project as in their study showed that people tend to give away large amounts of personal information while not to restricting access to it and despite the fact that information required for Facebook account is minimal, the total amount of information a user can post is quite large. Any information posted beyond these basic fields is posted by the will of the end user and since the profiles on social networking sites are maintained by their subjects they are likely to be 100% accurate, providing an ideal environment for harvesting data.
Furthermore, Debatin, Lovejoy, Horn and Hughes in their study also state that users claim to understand privacy issues, yet reportedly upload large amounts of personal information. Pervasive technology often leads to unintended consequences, such as threats to privacy and coupled with a rise in privacy concerns is the call to increase our understanding of the attitudes and behaviours toward privacy affecting systems.
The outlined theories have therefore informed our research activity.
Methodology
Our research activity was divided into two tasks. In the first stage we presented participants with questionnaire in which they specified the personal information they revealed on their profile (available for public viewing) such as basic descriptors (name, gender, sexual orientation, DOB, political views, religious views) location information (hometown, current town) education information (school, university) contact information (email and phone number) and pictures (profile picture, featured picture, albums).
In the next stage we presented participants with an online survey in which they indicated their gender and age along with some basic information regarding Facebook habits including the amount of time spent on the site daily (Less than an hour, 1-2 hours, 2-3 hours or more than 4 hours), and the main use for it (looking at memes, texting friends and family, scrolling, posting).
In order to understand user’s attitudes toward the information they share we asked them to rate their level of concern for each type of information being available to the public (on scale 10 to 0 with 10 being very concerned about this information being shared online). Furthermore, to understand user’s practices we asked them whether they are concerned about their Facebook privacy in general and whether they read Facebook terms and conditions prior to accepting them.
Respondents were further presented with a short True or False quiz which contained 9 statements from Facebook Privacy Policy. The aim of this was to test knowledge and understanding of Facebook privacy policy. The statements were as follows (1) Facebook can collect information such as address book, call log or message log history, (2) Facebook can access and determine your mobile operator, language, phone number, IP address and connection speed, (3) Facebook can gather information about other devices that are nearby or on your network, (4) Facebook doesn't sell your personal data to advertisers, and they don't share information that directly identifies you unless you give permission, (5) Facebook collects and uses all information they receive about you to suggest ads for you, (6) When you delete content on Facebook, it's no longer visible to other uses however it may continue to exist elsewhere on the system, (7) Facebook uses face recognition technology to recognise you in photos, videos and camera content, (8) Facebook collects location related information such as your current location, where you live, the places you like to go, and the people you're near, (9) Facebook collects data on your off-facebook activity, including websites and apps you visit and purchases you make.
Lastly, we made all participants aware that all of the statements were true and asked (1) if prior to this survey they knew about all the information Facebook gathers (2) if they are now more concerned and (3) will this affect what they continue to share.
References
Debatin, B., Lovejoy, J.P., Horn, A.K. and Hughes, B.N., 2009. Facebook and online privacy: Attitudes, behaviors, and unintended consequences. Journal of computer-mediated communication, 15(1), pp.83-108.
Jones, H. and Soltren, J.H., 2005. Facebook: Threats to privacy. Project MAC: MIT Project on Mathematics and Computing, 1, pp.1-76.