Following social networking privacy

Rodney Gedda

Rodney Gedda is the former deputy editor of CIO and former editor of Techworld.

A couple of weeks ago I invited an old school friend to become a “friend” on Facebook. I’m still waiting for confirmation (it’s been a while since we caught up), but that hasn’t stopped Facebook from send me the person’s friend updates - interesting. Gripes about social network privacy have been around for as long as they have existed, but what remains a concern is the assumed level of openness the networks provide.

Recently, Facebook threw its privacy controls back in the spotlight and allowed more controls over what people make public. Of course, that doesn’t mean fringes to those controls still won’t exist.

In the case of my pending friend request, I wonder if person knows if I can see the new connections made? I suspect not, and Facebook shouldn’t assume that the person is happy for other people to know as well.

What is your impression of the current level of social networking privacy? Are they taking a “let’s give a little slack and see if people complain” approach?

Without complete transparency over how their information is managed, consumers of social networking services will always be playing catch up to decisions made by the application designers.

Of course, Facebook is not alone and as I’ve mentioned previously, Google’s new Buzz social networking service attracted criticism for much the same reasons – it made a decision to publicise a social network in the Gmail service without any opt in by the consumer.

It looks like the only opt in people can be sure of with social networks is the option to have certain aspects of your personal information publicised without notice.

As social networks mature, let’s hope they turn the tide to a more opt in approach. The data may be in their hands, but then so is the choice to free it.