Investigation on Social Media's Privacy Violations
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Added on 2019-09-22
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This investigation delves into the privacy concerns arising from the use of social media and networking sites. It aims to analyze the limits of privacy on social media, the appropriateness of privacy standards, factors influencing privacy violations, ethical code of conduct, and effectiveness of policies in protecting privacy. The article also discusses the risks and protection of online privacy, privacy settings, and the use of nudging and persuasive computing to improve privacy protection.
Investigation on Social Media's Privacy Violations
Added on 2019-09-22
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An investigation on use of social media for violating privacy of othersIntroductionOverviewProject motivationProject objectivesObjectives:1.To find out the limits that individuals understand regarding their own privacy and other‘s privacywhile using social media. 2.To analyse the appropriateness of privacy standards for others in social media. 3.To determine the factors that influence individuals in violating privacy of others.4.To study the ethical code of conduct or legal framework to regulate the use of social media in violating privacy of others.5.To investigate the effectiveness of the policies and standards in protecting the privacy of people in context of social media. Project scopeLiterature Review The world today is very fast moving and is extensively using the internet technology. In this current era, the social networking has become very famous on the internet and all the people around the world use it. The generation or the age group that use it most frequently is the young population and the teenagers. They use this tool of social media and social networking for communicating with others and for expressing themselves in front of others. There are many social networking sites that allow the users to talk about each other’s common interests like they are able to share their photos, interests, job details, and political views etc. on the websites. All the people who have access to the internet are able to view each other’s posts and they are able to discuss with them whatever is going on in their external environment. One of the most debated topics in today’s world is the privacy concerns that arise due to the use of social media and the social networking. People have increased their participation in this area dramatically. There are many researches in this area and many journals and articles have talked about these concerns. Everyone talks about the increased privacy issues due to the use of social networking sites and the increased number of crimes due to the use of these websites. The technology is not used by the people in a proper way and some of them are not even aware of the privacy violations that happen with them or they do to others on the social media. People don’t refrain themselves from sharing private information on the websites that increases the risk to their privacy. When the people
share sensitive information on the social media, the concerns related to the privacy increases automatically. Definitions of privacyDifferent people have defined privacy in different ways. There are many different types of privacy like the personal privacy; information privacy etc. But the privacy related to the social media is the one that is related to the information privacy. When an individual claims to control the terms under which his/her personal information is used, disclosed or acquired, is called information privacy. The personal information includes the information that an individual can identify. There are boundaries to privacy of people too. One boundary is the disclosure boundary that enables a person to manage the issues and .0tensions between the public and the private. Then another boundary is the identity boundary thatenables a person to manage the self-representation with particular audience. This means that the behavior of people differ with different people. The way a person behaves in office may be different from his behavior at home. The last boundary is the temporal boundary that helps a person in managing his past actions and his expectations about the future. The behavior in this case may change with time. The online privacy related to personal information The protection of the personal information on social media is a big challenge in today’s world. The website developers are also concerned about protecting the people’s privacy. There are many researchers who have tried to find the reason behind this and they have also recommended ways to protect the people. (Bae and Kim, 2010) have written a paper in which they have suggested that higher levels of privacy could be achieved when the user or the concerned person is allowed to control his settings related to privacy. Whenever any stranger is trying to contact the person, he should be able to stop that stranger from contacting him and in the future too, the person should protect himself from receiving any messages from that stranger. The authors of this particular paper have put emphasis on designing a policy of privacy for the users of social media so that their personal information is protected and the others are not able to misuse their information. The authors of the paper have also tries to design one model for privacy using the agents of mobile. It has been stated by (Dötzer, 2006) that if privacy is lost one time, it becomes very difficult to re-establish that privacy and protect the personal rights in the future. Thus all kinds of communication systems must have privacy protection installed especially the mobile systems. There are profile pages onsocial media where the users practice self-representation and they interact with others and introduce themselves. They trust the data that is placed on their profile pages like the name they show, the pictures they share etc. the social media gives opportunity to people to share their information with others and it also allows others to comment on the things that people share. The internet and social media is so complex that the web privacy is automatically threatened. The state of privacy is that condition which allows only limited access to the persons. There are some rules and policies that the users utilize for achieving certain level of protection in their information. There are rules made for protecting the privacy of people and they differ as per the requirements and needs. For example, there is location privacy in which protection is given against the access to the
location of the user. But if the inline privacy is considered, there is no rule or policy to restrict the privacy breach online or on social media. There are just solutions that are being developed to protect the privacy of people. Some of these solutions include the protective technologies, legislative support and the social awareness. Among the protective technologies, the control is given to the access of the information and it also demands strong authentication of the information before it can be used by someone else. There protective technologies have been developed and they have been evolved with time. The use of encryption is very common in these technologies and encryption helps in solving the privacy related concerns in this. Then social awareness is used when the people are educated about therisks of misuse of the personal information if the people give their personal information online like their home address or their phone number. Finally, the privacy can be protected using legislation and the agreements with the users can be clarified for protecting the personal information. Thus law or the legalframework can be used for protecting the personal information of the people. Online privacy risks There are several risks surrounding the posting of personal information details on social networks. These threats can be caused by hackers or spammers who obtain users’ personal information details. Identity theft is one of the major risks that users face (Williams et al. 2009). Access to sensitive information may also lead to terrorism risks, financial risks and physical or sexual extortion (Gharibi&Shaabi 2012). Gao et al. (2011) discussed the common privacy breach attacks in online social networks. First, users usually upload their personal information when they trust the service provider. However, the provider can use these details for business purposes such as advertising. In addition, it is not only the service providers who can see the users’ personal information. Some online social networksprovide users with policies to determine the list of authorized persons who can see their personal information. These policies vary from one provider to another; some providers give users more flexibilitythan others and some provide encryption for their data. The second privacy breach can be caused by theuser’s friends, who can share the user’s personal information details with others. Friends who have access to the user’s personal information can copy and publish this information. The third breach is due to spammers. When spammers see the user’s friend list, they can see other users’ personal information by sending them a friend request, impersonating one of his/her friends by using the friend’s name or picture. Lastly, breaches can be caused by third party applications installed by users. These applications can be a threat to users, especially if they are not from a trusted provider. When the application accesses the users’ personal information, others can obtain this information. Novak and Li (2012) also claimed that privacy breaches can be caused by friends, applications, and exploitation of personal information details by the service providers for advertising. The authors added that understanding privacy settings is not enough to protect users, especially from friends and other online social network users. Thus, social networking websites such as Facebook prioritize the development of tools to protect privacy. This is manifested in the social network providers’ requests for new users to create new privacy settings. However, some users do not realize the risk of leakage of personal information (Lee et al. 2011). Therefore, sensitive information such as home address and date of birth should not be published online in order to avoid risks to online privacy. Increasing user awareness of these risks, providing a
privacy management system for users to control their personal information details, and constantly updating privacy policies can lead to a decline of these risks (Gharibi&Shaabi 2012). In addition, O’Brien and Torres 2012 wrote an article named Social Networking and Online Privacy: Facebook Users’ Perceptions. As a result, the researchers found that Facebook users are alert and cautious when using the social networking sites. However, Facebook users are not completely informed or aware of all activities concerning privacy on the social networking sites. Though, low trust levels to date have not hindered activity on Facebook and membership continues to rise. Facebook users seem willing to push aside trust issues to achieve social interaction. The importance of trust in a social networking context is clearly questionable and perhaps different determinants for online activity exist indifferent online environments. There are a number of barriers to trust in the online environment. These barriers include perceived risk, website design and content, the user themselves and privacy concerns. Privacy concerns are considered the greatest barrier of them all because ‘the internet, by design, lacks unified provisions for identifying who communicates with whom; it lacks a well-designed identity infrastructure’ (Leenes et al., 2008). Privacy concerns include online information collection techniques such as cookie technology involving extreme surveillance. The use and analysis of data are also a concern due to unethical merging and data mining practices to profile customers. The instant recording and permanence of activity, loss of control and ownership of data also creates barriers to online activity (Tavani, 2011). Social networking users claim to be concerned about risks to privacy, yet do little to safeguard their information (Dwyer et al., 2007). Often users openly disclose detailed and personal information on these networks, comfortable living a part of their lives online (Rosenblum, 2007). However, Facebook has continually introduced new features and services including the Newsfeed, Facebook Beacon, Facebook Advertisements and Facebook Platform, which subsequently lead to changes in the privacy settings and the privacy policy (less privacy) (Fletcher, 2010). With each additionalexpansion to the website has come a growing level of discontent and concern and a general feeling that ‘the company was eroding privacy and making substantial information public’ (Rothery, 2010).Online privacy protection Privacy settings, that allow the user to control the profile view and distribution of personal data, vary across social networking websites, and there is no privacy standard for controlling the user’s personal information settings. Although privacy settings should be chosen carefully, most online social network providers have complex privacy settings (Novak & Li 2012). These complex privacy settings may cause confusion among users (Gundecha, Barbier& Liu 2011). Different techniques have been designed to increase personal information privacy protection. Williams et al. (2009) listed some steps for online social network users to stay safe. These included: being aware of the risks of social networks, limiting the posting of personal information details, and being careful when dealing with strangers online or when reading any information from any sender. Most social networking sites have given their users more authority to control privacy settings. Users of some social networking sites are now able to classify their friend list into sub-lists, which allows some personal information details, such as birthday or relationship status, to be visible to one sub-list and hidden from others. Fang et al. (2010) designed a privacy recommendation wizard based on user inputs to help users classify their friend list into sub-lists. The wizard gives the user two options: to allow the friends in their sub-list to see their personal
information, or to deny them access to this information. Configuring privacy settings so that only friends can see your posts is not enough to defend oneself from other attacks such as applications and advertisements (Stutzman& Kramer-Duffield 2010). Lipford, Besmer and Watson (2008) found that showing an example of privacy settings International Journal of Security, Privacy and Trust Management ( IJSPPRIVACY) vol 2, No 2, April 2013 6 will enable users to understand their privacy settings better. It will also help them find out who can see their personal information. For instance, Facebook allows users to see their profiles from their friends’ point of view; this allows users to see what personal information their friends can see. This technique helps users understand privacy settings but does not provide security to protect them from neighbourhood attacks or other types of attacks such as viruses or spam. Fang and Lefevre (2010) designed a privacy wizard system to make it easier for users to control their privacy settings. It was designed based on friends classification to groups and asking questions. It guides users in choosing privacy settings for group or individual users by allowing the users to see or hide an item. For example, if Alice is Bob’s friend, then Bob can identify which items of his profile Alice can see. Bob can hide some details such as his date of birth and mobile number from Alice, and can do the same for his other friends. There has been some previous work attempting to apply nudging to computer security. For instance, Brustoloni et al. developed security dialogs in which users were held accountable for their decisions to open email attachments. Those who took unjustified risks could be “subject to a variety of sanctions, such as being unable to use the application for increasing periods of time...” A user study found that these dialogs resulted in significantly fewer unjustified risks [35]. An approach similar to nudging can be found in persuasive computing, a sub-field of computer science concerned with systems intentionally designed to “change a person’s attitude or behavior in a predetermined way” [37]. Persuasive technologies have been applied in specific domains including computer security. For instance, Forget et al. built a text password system that encourages users to create stronger text password [38]. A number of mechanisms have been proposed to help users better protect their privacy in social media. Fang et al. designed a privacy wizard that asks users to iterate over privacy settings for some of their friends. Based on this information, a classifier could be built automatically to categorize the remaining friends [36]. Lipford et al. investigated interfaces for social network privacy controls, comparing compact settings in the form of expandable grids to visual policies. They found that both alternatives were usable, but different users appreciated them for different reasons [40]. While most previous work on privacy protections for social media has focused on helping users adjust their settings up front, our work employs tools that encourage real-time adjusprivacyents during or immediately following the composition of a Facebook post.
Research MethodologyResearch Methods and Framework- quantitative and qualitativeData generation methods- observation, questionnaires, documents, interviewsData analysisResearch Analysis and FindingsFindings from quantitative sourcesWhy do you use social media?00.050.10.150.20.250.30.3510%30%30%25%5%It is found in the research that the main reasons due to which people use social media are: 30% people use it for staying connected with areas/people of interests like celebrities, film industry, and political
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