Tag Archives: online privacy
Zuckerberg: Facebook ‘Made a Bunch of Mistakes’ on Privacy
Hold up. Did the new guidelines imposed onto Facebook by the FTC ruin Facebook as we know it? It’s no secret that Facebook has had their fair share of issues when it comes to privacy. But with the new regulations slapped on Facebook by the FTC, the question is whether or not they deserve these harsh new rules implemented on them.
When looking at the subject, it’s important to take a few things into consideration. Firstly, Facebook has taken measures to make sure it is more private when issues have arisen. It’s not like they’re out there trying to exploit everyone using the community. Secondly, and potentially more importantly, the majority of Facebook users don’t take the time to set their privacy settings. So, now Facebook has been slapped with new regulations that could potentially cut down on their level of innovation, all because most of us complained about the privacy settings we weren’t taking the time to set up. Read More
Parents help kids lie to get on Facebook, study finds
Many people feel that rules are meant to be broken. That being said, oftentimes they are created for safety and protection. For example, Facebook has a very well advertised rule that children under the age of 13 may not join the site. But recently, there has been a swarm of children under the age of 13 active in the Facebook community. Many of these children are likely sneaking onto the site without their parent’s knowledge, but a new study has found that many parents of children under 13 are helping them get their very own Facebook accounts.
According to the study, “[t[he vast majority (95%) of the parents of 10-year-olds on Facebook were aware when their child signed up for the site, and 78% of those parents helped create the child’s account, according to the study. For 11- and 12-year-olds, the percentages of parental knowledge and involvement were slightly lower.” With the prevalence of cyber bullying and online predators, why is it that these parents are helping their children break the rules?
Privacy and fear. The two are intertwined. Yes, there are real fears related to online privacy–identity theft, credit card theft, stalking, even murder; but marketing? Come on. Marketing is not life or death, folks. It shouldn’t even drive anxiety. It’s simply a means to get you to buy a car, cleaning product, shoes, faucet, bank account, etc.
The US and much of Europe are capitalist societies that have been built and grown based on business success. Companies are going to keep trying as hard as they can to sell their product, but they would much rather try to sell it to a qualified over unqualified consumer. We all get frustrated being so bombarded by advertising in our capitalist markets, but there is no reason to fear being sold window cleaner or basketball shoes. Let’s face it, you are going to buy this stuff anyway. That’s what humans who have jobs and money do. We all try to live our lives more easily and more pleasurably, and companies that develop and sell products help us do that.
Yet “privacy” is being used as a blanket issue and marketing is the scapegoat because it’s far easier to attack than the big unsolvable issues like identity theft or stalking. Read More
Communities
Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg on Women in Workplace
Sheryl Sandberg delivered the commencement speech at the all-women college Barnard this past week, and she had quite a message to deliver to these ladies. Sheryl Sandberg is the COO at Facebook, and in charge of keeping techs most popular company in check. But the challenge she has posed to these Barnard grads was simple. She explained to the women that essentially, “men run the world”. She explained that women have the opportunity, now more than ever, to realize their ambition and act on it. While it may seem that many tech, and even social media companies, are run by men, she encourages women everywhere to get involved. She did not become Number 2 at Facebook without ambition. Graduates and parents alike applauded the speech, with one student even saying that her speech was a “perfect fit” for the way they teach at Barnard. What do you think? Is the gender gap still too large? Will tech companies be willing to hire female leaders with open arms?
Tools and Technology
Proposed Law Would Require Social Networks to be Private by Default
The newest move in the fight for social media privacy has come from California Senate Majority Leader Ellen Corbett (D-San Leandro). She has proposed a new law that would change the way social networks operate their privacy systems, and these social networks are not happy about it.
As the long standing debate of online privacy policies rages on, consumers have become increasingly anxious about their personal information being shared with advertisers. As consumers voice their opinions, the leaders in the online space have to learn to manage a healthy balance of: sharing information with brands/advertisers to drive successful campaign performance vs. continuing to make consumers feel safe in their online behaviors.
In the social space, consumers trust their social networks and feel that the information they share should not leave the tight circle of friends that they have cultivated. In the specific case of Facebook, consumers have spoken out against the service sharing their personal information with advertisers, driving Facebook to create new privacy regulations to ensure its members feel safe and comfortable. But are these social networks actually doing anything wrong? As Mark Zuckerberg points out during his announcement a few months ago, Facebook isn’t sharing anyone’s personal information; all of the targeting used by brands is actually done by Facebook itself. It seems that a lot of the concern by the Facebook consumers stems from their lack of knowledge about what advertiser targeting actual entails.
Lindsay Lewis | Critical Mass Chicago
The electro-bass voided, the rock and roll of the high-tide faded, the scene of holiday boaters and people dancing on boats for the sake of a three day weekend blurred into a distant background and suddenly my ears fell numb to all but the words “Finding these vulnerabilities, you can train a monkey to do it… But at the same time, hacking is about the path of least resistance. There’s no need to overly complicate things if a simple sequel injection can work.”
Those chilling words, spoken by Patrick Stoey, a key contributor to the Biggest Cyber Crime in History, were recanted in the June 10th issue of Rolling Stone. Albert Gonzalez, commonly hailed the “Capone” of Cyber Crime, enlisted Stoey and dozens of other hackers to execute some of the most sophisticated hacking heists of all time- targeting hundreds of high-profile companies like TJ Maxx, Barnes & Noble, and 7-11. The most pervasive of them all pirated the credit card numbers of over 130 million Heartland Payment Systems customers.
I put the magazine down for a minute to digest what I’d just read. As sympathetic for the victims as I naturally wanted to feel, my rationale classified both parties as naive. If a monkey had the brains to make off with hundreds of millions of credit cards and check out with millions in cash from a series of hacks that impacted an unquantifiable number of people, then “farming” money from 400 App Store Users seems like no-brainer to me.
Catching both stories simultaneously put a lens on the state of my own information security, pin-pointing it’s gaping holes and flimsy insulation and the more I sought to isolate my vulnerabilities, the more of myself the lens began to reveal. In a World boasting ease of access, we can quickly and efficiently maneuver into, out of, and between windows. So easily in fact, that we’ve begun treating them like the ones on our homes, leaving them open for a cool draft of cyber crime to circulate within and swiftly cash out. As the evolution of Web 2.0 has begun shaping the way we work, it has blindsidedly begun to shape the way we are.
Our everyday social behavior on Web 2.0 and mobile applications, can tell us a lot about our vulnerability to cyber crime because web applications and related technologies accounted for 82% of all security vulnerabilities on the web last year, according to a report released by Cenzic, a leader in web application security. More sobering than that, are the vulnerabilities themselves- Cyber Criminals not only capture our private data but our behavior as well. The top ten vulnerabilities on the web today fit seamlessly into the little things we do online everyday, living on the profiles of those we “add as a friend” but vaguely know at all, yet we trust to share our play-by-plays with and trust the info they share too. They patiently wade in the background of sidebar widgets on websites we trust enough to visit everyday. They hang out behind the buttons we so love… I mean “Like.” They dress themselves up as character limit-friendly little links and do all of the things we do on the websites we visit most
Using a scenario we commonly run into on Facebook as an example, the Flow Chart below demonstrates the ease of access a hacker has to execute the top ten types of attack mechanisms on the web today in one fell swoop.
