Olof Nilsson

 Ex: Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn ◦ Allows users to create web pages or profiles that provide information about themselves and are available to other users ◦ Offers a mechanism for communication with other users, such as a forum, chat room, or instant messenger  Social Networking Sites in this definition has been around since mid-90’s  Became really popular around year 2000

“In an age of digital media, do we really have any privacy?” – Oscar Gandy (1993)  Adults are concerned about invasion of privacy ◦ How corporations and government are centrally collecting data about consumers and citizens  Teenagers are freely giving up personal information ◦ Teenagers are freely giving up personal information through these social networks. For them the networks are tools that helps them define themselves.

Common opinion among teenagers and student is that they want to keep the information private among their friends. However, they do not seem to realize that Facebook and other social networks are public spaces. Most sites require that you specify valid addresses and some personal information. This is standard procedure and young people have been led to believe it is ok, that this information is not so personal.

 Social solution (social awareness) ◦ Informing students and alerting parents of minors about the dangers of social networking.  Technical solution ◦ Implementing higher security for the social networks, including age verification and limitations (14y+). ◦ Give members higher control of who sees what.  Legal solution ◦ Extend current laws to better protect children and others in a social network environment.

Facebook has been in the hot spot for some time due to loosely written privacy policy. What is it that you agree to when signing up?  All material posted on FB is available to FB for their own use, marketing, ads, commercial.  Beacons tracking shopping habits  Signing off doesn’t help, you have agreed to let FB store you information for as long as they see fit.  FB allows their Third Party Advertisers full access to your IP and the ability to execute Java Scripts and download beacons to your computer.

 Microsoft has bought shares in Facebook for $240 million. The plan is to tie facebook together with their under development ads- platform to compete with Google and others.