Question

On Christmas 2012, Randi Zuckerberg posted a photo of her family to her private Facebook page. Randi, the sister of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and a former senior Facebook executive, soon found that her photo had leaked to the general public and had been tweeted to thousands of people. Randi tweeted Callie Schweitzer, Director of Marketing at VOX Media, who had first posted the photo to Twitter: “Not sure where you got this photo. I posted it to

  

friends only on FB. You reposting it to Twitter is way uncool.” This incident came only 11 days after Facebook had released new privacy controls meant to help Facebook users understand who is able to see the content they post.

In late 2011, Facebook settled a suit filed by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) that charged Facebook with deceiving its customers about privacy issues since 2009. (The FTC regulates companies that take credit card information from consumers.) Facebook claimed that it would not share personal information with advertisers, that third-party applications would only be given the information they needed to function properly, that no one could access photos or videos from deleted accounts, and—perhaps most relevant to Randi Zuckerberg’s experience—that information posted to an individual’s Friends List would remain private. The FTC found that the company had not delivered on any of these claims. As part of the settlement, Facebook agreed to stop these practices until they had a better disclaimer and opt-out procedure. Mark Zuckerberg also issued a statement saying that, over the course of the previous 18 months, Facebook had introduced 20 new tools to address these and other privacyrelated concerns. However, by August 2012, the FTC had launched a new investigation into Facebook privacy practices. Facebook had partnered with Datalogix—a company that collects credit card purchasing information, such as where users are shopping and what they buy. Facebook users were included in Datalogix advertising research although they were not informed of this. Moreover, if Facebook users did, in fact, find out about the use of their private data, they could only opt out of the research by going to the Datalogix homepage.

In September 2012, Facebook acquired Instagram, a social media application that allows users to upload photos for long-term storage and sharing. Instagram boasted a user-base of 100 million users. On December 17, 2012, Instagram posted a privacy notice claiming the right to sell all photographs posted to its site without compensation to the user. The company further claimed that it could sell any other metadata associated with the photo, such as usernames, gender, addresses, mobile phone number, and email addresses—all information users were required to provide when setting up an account.

Instagram asked users who did not agree with the notice to remove their accounts within a few weeks. The new policy would go into effect for all users who accessed their accounts after January 19, 2013. On December 18, 2012, Instagram clarified that, despite the notice, the company had no current plans to sell users’ photos.

A: how many privacy issues in this case and what are they?

B: Describe a privacy issue so serious that it would cause you to stop using Facebook and Instagram.

Answer 1

A. Privacy Issues on the incidents posted in the question:

•    Illegal access of user's data without their permissions: In the description explained above, it has been noticed that Instagram issued a notice at least for some time period saying that it has the right to sell all the photos of individuals without their consent which is a privacy issue for an user. In such a case, how do the privacy of an user is preserved?.
• Using of user's data for research: It is also noticed that the user data is made use for a research purpose by Facebook with collaboration with Datalogix. This is a major leak on the privacy preservation by Facebook. One of the main reason for this is the companies like Facebook for their better improvement always relies on user's data. In fact, if the Facebook do research on such research activities it can improve their service and thereby also make a huge profit. This is a serious issue as research on user's data could be used by third party in any ways (both good or bad).
• Accessing the Private Data by Big Companies: The provision of accessing of private data including credit card number, mobile number, geo location by big companies like Facebook and all is a matter of concern. As the private data could be used by third parties for anything. Moreover, these sensitive data also help the third party people to get a blue print identity picture of the user. Thereby, the big companies like Facebook, Instagram could have a complete control over the user.

B. ISSUE OF USING USER'S DATA WITHOUT THEIR CONSENT FOR RESEARCH PURPOSE:

     The most biggest issue among privacy issues while using Facebook and Instagram is the access of user data by Fb and Instagram for research purpose. As given in the example, when the social media data related to an user or individual containing his/her personal sensitive information and that too when used by them for doing research purpose without their consent is a major privacy issue. In fact, in such cases, the social media privacies should preserve the identities of an individual. Other wise, there should be clear contract statement saying that the user should be informed about the research experimnet's what the company is going to do.

CONSEQUENCES OF RESEARCH:

• Third parties will get all the data and can generate new knowledge or data from the available data
• The user do not know how the outcome of a research will be utilized for
• When a third party has all our data and then it is possible to make large data can easily gain control and autonomy over ourselves by precise control and correct feeding of data that can satisfy us psychologically. This is the most dangerous threat of all.