Human Computer Interaction: Facebook App Security and Privacy

This essay explores Human Computer Interaction (HCI) within the Facebook application, focusing on its features, facilities, and challenges. A primary concern is data security, given the sensitive user information stored, such as phone numbers, addresses, and professional details. The essay discusses the risks of data leaks, potential damage from unauthorized access, and the use of shared pictures for malicious purposes like creating fake profiles. It also addresses the issue of online conflicts arising from differing ideologies expressed by users. Common methods for data protection, like privacy settings, and potential design changes, such as incognito mode, are suggested. The essay references existing literature on the impact of trust, security, and privacy concerns in social networking.

Running head: HUMAN COMPUTER INTERACTION
HUMAN COMPUTER INTERACTION
Name of student:
Name of university:
Author’s note:

1HUMAN COMPUTER INTERACTION
Facebook application
The selected app for this document is the Facebook app. Facebook is a social media
networking app that is used for connecting to people and make friends. This app is growing
popular with the help of its various features and facilities. This app can be used while
walking down the street, sitting at any desk, eating a meal, or driving a car. While using the
Facebook app, mind of the users are diverted. The major challenge for this app is the
assurance of data security of the users. Facebook profile of the users contain sensitive details
such as phone number, home address, and professional details. The threat of leak of data to
any unauthorised user might cause problems to the users and create worries. Data theft affects
the organisation as well as the users. The organisation has to invest a huge amount of capital
to implement firewalls of better standard and the process of recovering the stolen data can be
a hectic process. Unauthorised users can gain access to the data servers of the organisation
and cause temporary or permanent malfunction. The users of Facebook share picture on their
profile and these pictures can be used to create fake profiles to harass the users. There is an
issue of fights and violence regarding the ideology of any user when an individual post any
incriminating view of thought and the sentiments of other people can get hurt. If the privacy
is not set to the correct option then these thoughts or views can be used against that individual
by any malicious user or bullies.
The most common method of protecting the data on Facebook is to change the
privacy settings. This will help in hiding the confidential information from the users with
malicious intent. Facebook has implemented protective firewalls to prevent the data of the
users. The design of the app can be changed with the addition of incognito mode that will
help in hiding the information from the users [2].

2HUMAN COMPUTER INTERACTION
References
[1] (2013) Dhami, Anil, Neha Agarwal, Tamal Kanti Chakraborty, Brijendra Pratap Singh,
and Jasmine Minj. "Impact of trust, security and privacy concerns in social networking: An
exploratory study to understand the pattern of information revelation in Facebook."
In Advance Computing Conference (IACC), 2013 IEEE 3rd International, pp. 465-469.
IEEE,.
[2] (2013) Stutzman, Fred, Ralph Gross, and Alessandro Acquisti. "Silent listeners: The
evolution of privacy and disclosure on facebook." Journal of privacy and confidentiality 4,
no. 2