After 6 successful years since its start in February 2004, Facebook now boasts a total of more than 500 million users. Users may do anything from sharing information about their whereabouts to joining a common interest group to uploading full albums based on events they’ve been to or even just use the massive application of ‘poking’. However, with its wide context and vast information being publicized, there is bound to be some form of privacy breach. No matter how secure Facebook promises ones biodata to be, there still are reported cases of private information landing on the hands of other people. Like that of the recent privacy breach investigation by Wall Street Journal . It was reported that third party applications or games like Farmville, Texas Hold Em’ Poker, Café World and 6 other popular Facebook applications were transmitting user Ids to advertisers and other Internet tracking firms (Newman, 2010). No matter what privacy settings a user sets their Facebook page, their information still gets exposed. This is because when a person clicks a link, this will reveal their current URL. In the URL there is the user’s ID. Hence, web browsers will transmit ID with the user’s name, profile and public information to various companies. A company called Rapleaf Inc even linked Facebook ID details to their own database and proceeds to sell them to companies (Fiveash, 2010). Thus, the only way to protect yourself from having your privacy breached is to distance yourself from these applications entirely (Hudson, 2010). Besides that, hackers have also found a way to tap into a person’s photo album without having to be their friend or even if their settings are set to private. This is done so by copying the user’s ID and tweaking it into another URL thus gaining full access to the album as shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1
This has gone against the ethics of publishing in terms of misconduct. In the ethics of publishing, it states that no work should be undertaken without prior consent from the author himself or herself (Game & West, n.d.). Hence, Facebook users should adhere to the protection of their personal data. There are seven principles that include notice, purpose, consent, security, disclosure, access and accountability (ko-kr.consent.Facebook .com, n.d.). Consent and security being most important in this case as data should not be disclosed without consent and should be kept secure from all forms of abuse.
References:
Hudson, J 2010, How Harmful Is Facebook ’s Privacy Breach?, viewed 12 November 2010, <http://www.theatlanticwire.com/opinions/view/opinion/How-Harmful-Is-Facebooks-Privacy-Breach-5424>
Newman, J 2010, Facebook ’s Privacy Breach: What You Need to Know, viewed 12 November 2010, <http://www.pcworld.com/article/208135/facebooks_privacy_breach_what_you_need_to_know.html>
Fiveash, K 2010, Facebook gets poked in latest privacy gaffe, viewed 12 November 2010, <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/10/18/facebook_apps_privacy_breach/>
Game, A & West, MA n.d., Ethical Publishing Principles – A Guideline for Authors, Organisation Studies, Aston Business School.
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