The Daily Star has scaled back its' use of the social networking programs like Facebook as serious data-harvesting claims have been made about the way some of these applications report your internet usage back to marketers in America.
|
|
 |
| |
Social media site give a lot away at no charge . . . but is it really free? Are you happy surrendering some of your privacy to use these applications? |
“People no longer have an expectation of personal privacy,” said Facebook whiz-kid Mark Zukerberg. And Facebook is doing everything it can to ensure that on-line privacy becomes a thing of the past. His wealth depends on it.
With Facebook's launch on the US Stock Market coming up soon, Zukerberg is keen to show just how much power he has to collect data from user's computers. With no real products to sell, Facebook, like Google, relies on making money from the massive amount of data they collect on their users.
For example, if you are logged into Facebook, a small file is built up recording your total browsing behaviour. Every website you visit is logged. This data is regularly uploaded to the US for analysis, storage and use by either Facebook itself, or sold to advertisers looking to efficiently target consumers with advertising or offers.
It was recently discovered that you did not even have to be logged into your Facebook account for some data to gathered and stored. The Facebook file just kept being updated. Then when you did log in again, the data was uploaded to Facebook’s massive bank of data servers.
What does this mean to you? Every time you go a website, Facebook knows. It knows when you went there. What you clicked on. How long you stayed on a page . . . and where you went next.
So if you have a cold and are looking up cough remedies. Facebook knows about your cold. If you look up the doctor's website to find the phone number. Facebook knows. If you regularly look at left wing or right wing political commentators online, Facebook guesses your politics. If you are arranging a funeral for a loved one and are looking for funeral homes, Facebook knows about your search in real-time and is allowed to sell or use that information for commercial purposes.
And to be fair, it's not just Facebook. If you use Google's Gmail, by agreeing to use it, you have granted Google the right read your email and use the information in it to target you with advertising.
If you stay logged in to Gmail while you use Google, Google knows what you are searching for on the internet. Not as a part of millions of people who live in Australia and use Google.
No. It is much more powerful than that. They know about you – you the specific person as well. And they’ve already read your emails. And they’ll keep the data for quite some time.
Maybe the trade-off is OK. Many people say that if you have nothing to hide, why would it worry you if Google and Facebook are looking over your shoulder?
But what it does mean is that a lot of your data is in the hands of young men and women whose personal fortunes depends on using that data as their primary business model.
Imagine for moment that it was the Australian Government reading your emails and collecting data on every website you visit. Every search query you made. Or ASIO. Or if it were our local police officers who were collecting data on every move you made on the internet. Would you still feel OK about it then?
Much depends on your confidence in the honesty and ethics of those who are now in charge of storing, analysing and trading your personal data.
Do you trust these companies? Do you believe that a 27 year old entrepreneur should be the sole person to decide about how much of your privacy you should surrender to him just to make a couple of posts on his Facebook application?
Here is what Facebook's Mark Zukerberg said when Facebook updated everyone's privacy settings last year - relaxing them so that much more information was automatically collected and transmitted.
"Doing a privacy change for 350 million users is not the kind of thing that a lot of companies would do. But we viewed that as a really important thing . . . we decided that these would be the social norms now and we just went for it.
They just went for it. No checks and balances. No debates in parliament about the rights and wrongs. They just went for it because they could.
In Europe, Facebook is coming under severe scrutiny for its cavalier attitude to personal privacy. Facebook and other social media applications are constantly changing and updating their terms of use and privacy policy. Keeping track of these important changes is difficult, unless you are a lawyer trained in such matters.
Facebook has caused a revolution in how we communicate because Mr Zukerberg saw a new future and just went for it without asking permission. He is a visionary.
What might be viewed as audacious in a brash young man with new idea becomes something different when he is in charge of one of the world's largest communications and media companies that hold years or decades of your online browsing behaviour, opinions and pictures on their servers and which owns your personal data they have collected.
Having Mr Zukerberg - or anyone else - analysing and storing, using and trading our personal data is a significant change to the way the world works. We all need to think about that.
I did.
And I've done everything I can to stop Facebook harvesting my personal information. I only log into Facebook on my second computer and I worry what else I might be missing. Not because I have anything to hide.
To me, the way I think, what I buy and the range of things I’m interested in are none of Facebook’s damned business. And I'll do what I can to make it stay that way.
Call me cranky if you like . . . but these guys make me nervous.