There can be no doubt that the popularity of Facebook as a social networking site has grown tremendously in recent years. At the same time, however, Facebook has also been widely criticized for their lack of online privacy and their near apathy to many other security issues.
Members are seriously concerned whether they are at any financial risk using Facebook and how to safeguard the privacy of their personal profiles. It is said that during 2008, several organizations withdrew their advertisements because they appeared on the Facebook pages of controversial members and/or groups.
Take this classic example. When you go to privacy settings of Facebook, it will lead you to a page that displays a table containing all your personal information, photos and profile details and this is available for all to see, including your friends, but also a host of unknown or less known people. Of course, there is the “recommended” setting where selective information is available to all and more private information is for viewing by known friends only.
With the benefit of hindsight, it can be said that it will be prudent for users to desist from posting any sensitive personal information. The simple logic is why post your personal information for friends who, in any case, are expected to know all about you?
Another risk is that you may unwittingly click on a seemingly innocuous button and chances are this button might trigger the downloading of a virus. This could possibly damage your computer or result in sending spam messages to all contacts in your list of friends and also deceive them into downloading the virus. However, the one relieving factor is that many present day web browsers will alert and even warn you before you choose to download any files.
One of the maladies that plagues Facebook is it lets everybody write an application and, curiously, third party applications are made available on the network to the public without any vetting. There is the facility to download “applications” and the tricky part is any person can create an application and then make it available to all. Herein lies the threat that someone can mischievously make an application which deceives you into innocently downloading a virus. Again, the saving grace is there is the “application settings” within the “privacy settings” page where you can safeguard yourself from all malicious intent or mischievous ruse.
To further aggravate matters, the Wall Street Journal has carried a story on how Facebook and some other social networking sites have unintentionally shared identifiable user information with certain unconnected advertising networks. Facebook reportedly has over 500 million members, and the sheer enormity of its size can be reason enough for analysts to closely track Facebook’s indifference to security concerns of its users and the likely repercussions.
The fact is a swarm of security bugs have invaded Facebook within the last few months due to the changes Facebook has made to its user privacy policies and the several product launches that took place at the end of April this year. Some of these bugs are there for the first time and it is believed that new bugs often emerge with the introduction of any new software.
There is no denying that Facebook has a miserable record when it comes to managing security-related problems as compared to other similarly fast-growing websites. This is an area of great concern for Facebook users as Facebook holds an inconceivably huge amount of private data.
However, to date, none of these bugs have led to any serious harm to the users. In fact, the damage has hitherto been only to Facebook’s popular image and the word is already going around that Facebook is an unsafe place to share sensitive personal information. It is high time that Facebook does something to stem the rot before its reputation is damaged beyond repair.
The one possible solution will be for Facebook to go slow on its product development and concentrate on enforcing stricter security rules. Facebook may justly feel that this would provide an edge to its competitors but Facebook has little choice in the matter.
There is some good news in store as analysts say that Facebook has now woken up to the ground realities and has started to seriously address the security concerns of its users and is contemplating firm actions against virus’ or spamming that is venomously spreading all over the social network. It is to be noted that Facebook has recently announced their new policy on security issues and likely solutions.
Facebook has compiled a list of tips to guide users on what they should do when confronted with security issues and the guidelines also offer suggestions as to how users can help their friends with overcoming similar security issues.
