Essay On Facebook Privacy

On the other hand, social factors entail risk to privacy, therefore, the second part of the essay focuses on such aspects. First of all, Facebook users share accurate personal information without much consideration about harmful consequences it may have to their privacy (Rosenblum, 2009; Young and Quan-Haase, 2009, p. 265). Information users used to believe are private become public nowadays. One of the reasons of such phenomenon lays behind the level of trust the social networking site gains amongst its users. Dwyer, Hiltz, and Passerini (2007) suggest that Facebook is more trustworthy than Myspace, according to its users, hence people are willing to provide personal information on their online profiles. Accordingly, communication becomes

Some specialists suggest sharing private data, for example, addresses and schedules, leads to increased vulnerability of users and they become easily trackable for stalkers (Acquisti and Gross, 2006; Jones and Soltren, 2005). Worth noting is the fact that using Facebook and sharing seemingly innocent content can have a huge impact on one’s life outside social media. Debatin et al. (2009, p. 97) state that Facebook incites rumours and gossips, however, many users often regard it as a minor side effect. Ordinarily, the problem of social privacy is caused by a wide range of ‘friends’ – from schoolmates to family members and acquaintances. Sharing personal content excessively may, therefore, lead to inconveniences such as social surveillance and social control (Brandtzæg et al. 2010, p. 1021). Debatin et al. (2009, p. 100) report that although many people are familiar with privacy settings, they accept others as ‘friends’ who are only acquaintances or even strangers, thus, many unknown people have access to their personal information. Such gullibility of many Facebook users can be explained by the desire for popularity and social interactions. All in all, people are willing to disclose their personal data and share content disregarding adverse

There is a variety of factors and pressures which force openness and transparency upon people. One of the most common examples of threats to privacy is Facebook, a leading social networking site. Users continuously face challenges to keep some spheres of their lives private, simultaneously satisfying their desire for sociability. There are two categories of reasons which engender privacy risks – institutional and social. The former include Facebook’s privacy policy, interface, applications and so forth. These features are set to promote openness and sharing tom make monitoring online activity and harvesting personal data easier. As a result, users are endangered to a form of surveillance. Moreover, Facebook is well-known for some unethical actions which caused controversies – such as changing privacy settings for every content and making it public. Nonetheless, although most people are aware of the invasion of privacy, they continue to use the platform because of its popularity and convenience. The second group of factors, social ones, focuses solely on people’s online activity and their reaction to privacy risks, as well as the hypothetical attacks from other users. Generally, the Facebook community understands and familiarises with privacy settings, yet only a small fraction of users adjusts those settings to safeguard their data. What is more, although many users are aware of possible