Facebook owns you

Facebook began in 2005 as a simple and effective collaborative tool. But today, as it gets set to register its 500 millionth user, the social networking site is cashing in on all the personal data that people are posting there, mostly without permission. R Krisha talks to experts and users to find out just how hard it has become to keep your data personal.

'Relax, 'said the night man,
'We are programmed to receive.
you can check out any time you like,
But you can never leave!'

These lines come at the end of the song Hotel California (The Eagles), describing an enchanted place of many irresistible charms, which comes with a catch - if anyone tries to do anything of their own free will, the place becomes a nightmare. You can have fun, but only as long as you play by the rules set by 'them'.

Many Facebook users have recently been feeling similarly trapped, prompting social media enthusiast Netra Parikh to tweet a helpful link last week-www.reclaimprivacy.org. The service analyses your Facebook account and points out how much of your personal data there is public without your knowing it, and suggests steps to plug the holes. Parikh got a flood of responses to her Twitter post, ranging from "very worried" to "Should I delete my Facebook account?"

Saurabh Kejriwal, an ad writer based in Delhi, is among those who're getting turned off. "The reason I got hooked to Facebook three years ago was because it was simple and safe as well as a great collaborative platform. But today there have been so many changes that I am no longer comfortable."

Kejriwal is referring to the myriad potential invasions of privacy on Facebook today. Earlier, he could simply share his photos with his friends. Today he has to handle whole gamut of optional settings if he doesn't want to end up sharing his life with the whole world. "It makes me nervous."

For example, your friends list - which in 2005 was visible to your friends or friends of your friends - is now public information, accessible to anyone on the internet by default.

But last month this dilution of privacy on Facebook went to a whole new level, with a set of changes which are ironically also a huge step forward in the way information is organised and personalised for the user.

New personalising tools

When mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, took the stage at F8, the company's conference for its developers, wearing his usual jeans, sneakers and black hoodie, his simple demeanour contrasted with the game-changer he was about to unveil.

The most important change is open Graph, a platform where Facebook shares your public information - such as your friends list, interests, status updates, etc-with its partners such as Yelp (a hang-outs review site), Pandora (a music streaming service), and CNN, among others, This allows the partner websites to dish out content most relevant to you.

Facebook also announced a new feature called Community Pages, where information on various topics such as cooking or hiking can be organised. The catch here is that Facebook doesn't really ask you whether you want to contribute to a community page. Your status update on hiking, for example, will be pulled into the community page without your permission.

Another important change announced by Zuckerberg related to third party application on Facebook, such as Farmville. Earlier, these app developers couldn't store your data for more than 24 hours, but under the new policy they have permanent access.

The app developers reportedly broke into applause at this announcement. But privacy advocates as well as social media enthusiasts felt exactly the opposite.

Users lose control

There is resentment against Facebook's latest moves because it takes control away from the user.For Example, even earlier you could personalise your experience at Yelp using Facebook Connect, but it required prior permission from the user. Open Graph on the other hand is ON by default and opting out is complicated.

"people are afraid that this puts too much power in the hands of Facebook, because it is difficult even for sophisticated users to opt out of Open Graph," says Gaurav Mishra, CEO, 2020 Social, a social business strategy firm based in Delhi.

"So far, only when I clicked on the Facebook Connect button did Yelp have access to my Facebook data. Now, by default, the moment I go to Yelp, it gets access to my data. Today, Yelp has access, tomorrow a whisky brand, or a direct marketing company may get access. So who decides who has access to data? How can Facebook decide it can share my data with whoever it deems fit?" says Mishra.

Facebook's privacy settings can be tweaked to disallow such access. But experts say it takes a great deal of effort to find the right settings, and then even more confusing to decide the levels you would want to set. And then you have to periodically review these settings as new features and services come into play.

Compounding the problem is the fact that even if you are good at fine-tuning all your privacy settings, you friends could still be sharing data about you (say, photos of you that they took). Again, this data can be shared with Facebook's partners via Open Graph.

Similarly, the problem with the new community Page feature is that it pulls in data such as status updates made by users without their consent, simply based on the words they use. So a status update containing the words 'My stupid boss' not only goes to your friends but also to a 'My Stupid Boss' community page, where it gets archived. And as of now there is no real opt-out.

More dangerous is allowing third-party applications to keep a permanent record of your data.

"Imagine all your data - preferences, location, what you thinking - being available to spammers, identity thieves or direct marketers. Or even big companies like banks for that matter," says Mishra.

Besides, how secure is the data which these third-party application developers collect? "In my experience, third-party application developers have a far worse track record of protecting user privacy than Facebook itself," points out Arvind Narayanan, who is doing research on privacy issues at the Stanford University.

Value of information

So why is Facebook doing all this? Well, it stands to gain a lot from Open Graph and the other new tools it has introduced. For example, a lot of data will be generated in Community Pages. When this becomes searchable, it will drive traffic to Facebook.

Facebook has also introduced a 'Like' button. Various websites can have this button on their pages. If you like an article you read or a game you played you simply click on the 'Like' button if it's there on the page. From a user's perspective, she is just sharing what she likes with her friends. Facebook, on the other hand, is building up a database of what the user likes and will eventually serve ads to her based on the 'likes'.

"So far companies like Yahoo! have been trying to show us ads based on our behaviour, but it is difficult because they have to deduce our behaviour. Facebook, on the other hand, already has our profile information, our location, and interests. So it is going to become easier for them to target ads to us. Now on a real-time basis they know what we like across the Web," explains Mishra.

Marketers have already started benefiting from the changes. Asfaq Tapia, head of social media, Epigram Advertising, which promotes Bollywood films, is one of them. "We create pages on Facebook dedicated to our films and users can become fans of those pages. After the changes Facebook made, the number of fans for one of the films, Khelien Hum Jee Jaan Sey, shot up overnight simply because people happened to mention it in their 'interests' and got automatically pulled into a community page. This wouldn't happen earlier," says Tapia, who now has many more Facebook users and people on their friends list to target with the film's promotion. It's ironic that many of these people became 'fans' of the movie without really intending to.

When he puts on the hat of a Facebook user, however, Tapia is worried. "From a place meant for users, it has become a place for marketers," says Tapia, who has stopped listing anything in the 'interest' section of his profile since it gets linked to community pages as well as advertisements on Facebook.

Facing a backlash

Facebook is on the verge of crossing the 500 million user mark, and the company has been aware for some time now of the value of the vast user information on the site which can be monetised. But for this to happen, the information you give Facebook must be public. So, in December last year Facebook made much of your profile information public by default - this includes your name, photographs, name of your friends, and the city you live in.

This paved the way for changes introduced last month where your public information was shared with Facebook partners as part of Open Graph. And of course, once personal information becomes public, it becomes easier to profile users and serve them ads according to their interests, location, etc.

However, the company is now facing a huge backlash with 14 privacy advocacy groups filing a complaint with the US Federal Trade Commission against Facebook last week. The FTC is now taking a close look at how online social networks are using people's data. This has made the top brass at Facebook go into a huddle and the company is expected to announce changes in its privacy policies later this week.

Vaibhav Malelo, an IT professional based in the US doesn't mind the myriad privacy options so much. "It's OK if they want to allow such customisation. But if they add something new (privacy setting) and by default it is ON (set to share the data) then there is a problem. I wouldn't want it that way."

Rahul Mehra* found out from personal experience what problems such an arbitrary change in privacy settings can cause. "I had set my privacy settings in a way that none of my family members could have access to photos in which I was tagged. Recently, I went to a brewery in Pune with my friends. The pictures were uploaded on Facebook, but they know I have a girlfriend and that I have a great liking for beer. It wasn't very comfortable at home," he says.

Mehra, a savvy user, at least knew how to rectify the problem. A vast majority of Facebook users simply don't have the know how or time to find and turn off these settings.

Of course, another way of looking at the issue is, 'Don't put stuff on your social network that you wouldn't want your mother to see.' After all, should we even expect to keep secrets in an online social world?

But the question is of breaching the user's trust. Twitter makes it clear that everything you post is accessible to the whole world, unless you choose to keep your tweets private. At the other end is email, where conversation by default is restricted between you and the recipients of your email. But what if Google or Yahoo! or Hot mail decide suddenly to make all our emails public?

Facebook started off by saying that you could share stuff with friends whom you chose. Today, much of your data is available to people who are not your friends as well as to companies who have become partners of Facebook. Sure, there are benefits to such a move: It will help in funneling relevant information to me base on my likes and what my friends like. The problem is that for those who chose not to share their data it's hard to opt out, and harder still to keep track of the various ways in which the data is being accessed and used.
* Name changed on request

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Is IT time to log off?

Discontent with Facebook has been spreading rapidly over the past few weeks. On Thursday 'how do I delete my Facebook account' was among the top 20 trending searches on Google Hot Trends.

Websites are cropping up to expose Facebook privacy issues. YouOpenBook.org, for example, searches public status updates of users, which have grown since Facebook began recommending users make their status updates public. The developers say that the site is meant to pressure Facebook to switch its account setting so that such updates are private by default and wouldn't be accessible to developers.

Then there's the Facebook privacy scanner available at reclaimprivacy.org. This is a simple bookmark toll that you run while logged into your own Facebook profile. It checks your privacy settings, tells you what information is locked down and which is public. The current version doesn't make the changes for your; you'll have to dive into Facebook's privacy settings to do that on your own.