Are Our Privacy Settings Really Private?
Facebook: Are our privacy settings really private?
When was the last time you actually read the Terms and Conditions of a website before clicking on ‘accept’?
Truth be told, probably none of us ever did.
We often use multiple social media platforms for various reasons, both personal and professional. While for some people social media sites are a means for connecting with their social circle, for a lot of people, it’s a newfound means of earning and rising to fame overnight.
However, with the rise in consumption of social media, there has been a surge in data privacy concerns. We often don’t cognize how pressing the issue is; and in recent times, it only surfaced when claims of the US Presidential elections being influenced by ‘big-data analysis’ rose and the entire Cambridge Analytica Controversy came about. Since then, multiple canards of data breach have been going around the internet and other news and media platforms. Large-scale aggregate analyses of anonymous big-data can actually help curate valuable results and insights that address macro level socio-economic and political issues and provide new avenues for scientific discovery as well. With the rise of machine learning, analyzing this big data has also become relatively easier.
However, the problem is multi-fold. Despite being unethical, only a part of it is illegal, as in most instances, policies are shrewdly drafted in a manner in which we unknowingly provide servers with access to our information.
For example, not many of us are aware of the fact that even our friends’ activities can be used to track information about us, in spite of Facebook T&Cs explicitly stating “We also receive and analyze content, communications and information that other people provide when they use our Products. This can include information about you, such as when others share or comment on a photo of you, send a message to you, or upload, sync or import your contact information.”
As you might have noticed at some point, most of the recommendations on your news feed are in some way or the other related to your usual interests, but how would they precisely know what would you like. Simple, by collecting information about how you use their products, such as the types of content you view or engage with; the features you use; the actions you take; the people or accounts you interact with; and the time, frequency and duration of your activities.
Furthermore, even your online purchases aren’t limited to just amazon or flipkart. Facebook too is gets involved in your finances the minute you opt for any hyperlinked paid feature or make donations. For that matter, when we talk about Facebook getting involved with money matters, we must also mention how by the basic info like date of birth, address etc. that is often readily available on Facebook can be used to create a bank account or credit card.
Moreover it also has certain jurisdiction over content you are the legal owner of the minute you upload it. When you share, post or upload content that is covered by intellectual property rights on or in connection with their products, you grant them a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free and worldwide licence to host, use, distribute, modify, run, copy, publicly perform or display, translate and create derivative works of your content (consistent with your privacy and application settings).
Another interesting feature is how the internet or the world wide web has become a literal web where almost all websites have links to their facebook pages embedded on their websites and the minute you click on them you unwillingly share a huge chunk of your data with them.
Amusingly, even while you read this article, several algorithms will be working to connect the dots of your activity so that they could come up with more recommendations of the same.
A pertinent question to ask in times like these is, are we really free?
