ITNE2002 Network and Information Security: Facebook Privacy Report

This report delves into the critical privacy issues surrounding Facebook, highlighting the vulnerabilities that expose user data to commodification and surveillance. It examines the reasons behind these issues, including default privacy settings, automatic activity posting, lack of user control over news feeds, and the prevalence of fake profiles. Recent news and case studies, such as the 2018 data blunder affecting millions and the Cambridge Analytica scandal, are discussed to illustrate the real-world impact of these privacy breaches. The report concludes by emphasizing the importance of addressing these issues and suggests recommendations for Facebook users to protect their personal information. Desklib provides this document as part of its extensive library of student-contributed assignments and study resources.

Facebook privacy issues
Student’s name
Student’s Author

Introduction
• With the growth of social media, the privacy
of people has become vulnerable to
commodification and surveillance.
• Due to the use of social media like
Facebook, an individual is allowing others
to access their personal data and
information.
• It is found that most of the Facebook users
remain unaware of how their personal
information are vulnerable to reselling
activities as well as information aggregation.

Reasons of Facebook privacy issues
It is found that there are a number of problems with the
privacy and security settings of Facebook and some of
the problems are discussed below:
• Default privacy and security settings
• Automatic posting of recent activity
• No user control for news feed
• Fake Facebook profiles
• Deleting and deactivating accounts
• Instant personalization

Recent news on Facebook privacy issues
• On 9th June 2018, a blunder happens when
people were posting items on their walls for
their friends or smaller group but
unknowingly the posts of the content have
been shared publicly.
• The blunder that occurs affected more than 14
million users whereas Facebook is blaming a
software bug that automatically changes the
setting of the user's account.
•

Recent news on Facebook privacy issues
• One of the surveys that are conducted reflects that out of 3413 Americans who use Facebook
during 29th May to June 11 revealed that one of the political consulting firms had improperly
gathered personal data of around 87 million users without their consent and uses it in Trump
• The company has then overhauled its setting in the month of March and has prompted users
for reviewing their privacy settings.

Conclusion
• From the entire paper, it can be concluded that Facebook privacy issues are creating major issues
as well as problems in the life of people
• It is quite necessary to take a significant step in order to avoid the privacy issues.
• The paper reflects on a number of case studies and news websites and elaborates the blunders
that occur due to privacy issues.
• Moreover, the paper also illustrates a number of recommendations that must be followed by
Facebook users in order to keep oneself away from the privacy issues.

References
• Bakshy, E., Messing, S. and Adamic, L.A., 2015. Exposure to ideologically diverse news
and opinion on Facebook. Science, 348(6239), pp.1130-1132.
• Billboard., 2019. Facebook Privacy Issues Arise Again Following New Data-Sharing
Report. [online] Available at:
https://www.billboard.com/articles/business/8459083/facebook-privacy-issues-arise-again-
new-data-sharing-report [Accessed 20 Jan. 2019].
• Chen, R. and Sharma, S.K., 2015. Learning and self-disclosure behavior on social
networking sites: the case of Facebook users. European Journal of Information
Systems, 24(1), pp.93-106.
• Coco, G.L., Maiorana, A., Mirisola, A., Salerno, L., Boca, S. and Profita, G., 2018.
Empirically-derived subgroups of Facebook users and their association with personality