Do social netwoking sites deliberately exploit poor privacy usability?

Bruce Schneier, BT's chief security technology officer, discusses "privacy salience" in The Guardian. Leslie John, Alessandro Acquisti, and George Loewenstein at Carnegie Mellon University demonstrated in a series of experiments that reassuring people about privacy makes them more, not less, concerned. In experimental online surveys, when privacy issues were made salient, people reacted negatively to the subsequent confidentiality assurance and were less likely to reveal personal information.

Schneier argues that this phenomenon does a lot to explain how social networking sites think about privacy. "From a business perspective, social networking sites don't want their members to exercise their privacy rights very much. They want members to be comfortable disclosing a lot of data about themselves."

Joseph Bonneau and Soeren Preibusch of Cambridge University have studied privacy on 45 social networking sites and found that privacy settings were often confusing and hard to access. Facebook was the worst. Privacy tends to increase with the age and popularity of a site. General-use sites tend to have more privacy features than niche sites. The researchers found that sites consistently hide privacy details, while promoting promote the benefits of disclosing personal data.

A two-track marketing strategy seems to obscure privacy issues from the general user, but reassure 'privacy fundamentalists'. "The marketing need to reduce privacy salience will frustrate market solutions to improve privacy; sites would much rather obfuscate the issue than compete on it as a feature", says Schneier. Source: Guardian, 15 July 2009. tinyurl.com/ml7kv4

Facebook sorts out privacy mess

Following many privacy bungles, Facebook is overhauling its complicated privacy controls to simplify its users' ability to control which information they share with their friends, family, colleagues and strangers. Facebook is consolidating its existing six privacy pages and more than 30 settings onto a single privacy page with standardised privacy options for various pieces of content. Previously, users had to navigate page after page to exclude bosses or co-workers from seeing their photo albums, status updates or shared links. One of Facebook's most notable privacy mishaps was a tracking tool called "Beacon," which broadcast information about their activities at other Web sites. "They are learning how to listen carefully to their users," said Jules Polonetsky, co-chairman and director of the Washington-based Future of Privacy Forum and former chief privacy officer at AOL. He added that Facebook has learned from the past that suddenly making big changes, whatever they are, has not been the most effective approach. The site is also getting rid of its regional networks, which have led to users inadvertently sharing information with network members in an entire city or country. Source: Sydney Morning Herald, 2 July 2009. tinyurl.com/nxyazl