IT News and Information Blog

Facebook Privacy Issues   24.05.2010

Ongoing privacy issues with Facebook is driving users to alternative social networking services, the BBC news reports. Criticisms of Facebook include the lack of privacy of their users, child safety, the use of advertising scripts, data mining, and the inability to terminate accounts without first manually deleting all the content (Wikipedia).

Facebook is a social networking system used by millions of users globally to keep in contact with friends, for entertainment, as well as a marketing and promotional tool for businesses.

A growing number of users are leaving or planning to leave Facebook because they feel their information is not kept secure or private. Facebook generates profits by selling user's information to third-party companies for marketing research purposes according to industry sources. A survey by Sophos found that 16 percent of the 1,588 Facebook users polled have already stopped using the social network due to inadequate control over their data. 60% of existing users are considering leaving the network according to the poll. This trend could have serious implications for businesses that use Facebook as a networking medium.

There are other social networking organisations hoping to taking advantage of Facebook's customer dissatisfaction.

Lee Bryant of Headshift consultants said, in the BBC article, that many people are looking for alternatives. such as Diaspora. Diaspora is an open source, "privacy aware, personally controlled, do-it-all distributed open-source social network". Open source is based on a non-profit philosophy, unlike Facebook which is profit motivated company.

(See Cyberoak's The Problem(s) of Facebook blog entry for comment about the implications for businesses).