Justin Wilkerson
Comp. Sci. 49s
Professor Babu
Discussion Report
“Facebook Grows Up” by Steven Levy
“Information Revelation and Privacy in Online Social Networks (The Facebook Case)”
by Ralph Gross and Alessandro Acquisti
History of Facebook
• Founded by Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg, in February 2004
• In August 2005 thefacebook was officially called Facebook, and the domain
Facebook.com was purchased for $200,000 Only could access Facebook if you
had a valid college email (high school students granted access September 2005)
• September 11,2006, open enrollment policy
• Just like Google, Facebook generates revenue through advertisements
Online Social Networks
• Dates back to 1960’s
• Social software Weblog groups 9 categories: business (i.e.
GoingProfessional.com), common interests (i.e. BookCrossing.com), dating
(EHarmony.com), friends (i.e. Myspace.com), pets (i.e. Catster.com), photos (i.e.
Flickr.com), face-to-face facilitation (i.e. Meetup.com), MoSoSo (mobile-socialsoftware), edge cases social networking plus (i.e. Insiderpages.com)
• Sites offer core features like “Profiles” and the ability for users to be contacted or
contact others
Information Revelation
• Social networking sites share the basic purpose of online communication, but
goals and usage patterns are different from each other
The use of real names of its users is encouraged by many of the sites like Facebook, but
sites like MySpace most users do not use their real names all the time
• Information can be revealed often by hobbies and common interests
• Semi-public info. Such as previous schools and work places
• Private Info. Like drinking and or smoking habits
• And open-ended entries
Visibility is a high variable on online social networks
– Some sites allow you to view other users profiles
– Some sites allow users to limit what others see
– Such Visibility is privacy controls are updated each day, like on Facebook
•
Across these different sites, more and more users are giving out personal
information
– Personal Email addresses
• AIM, Yahoo, etc.
–
–
Phone numbers
Current Residence
The Social Network Theory and Privacy
• Relationship between a person’s social network and privacy can be multi-factored
• In some cases, users want their info. to circulate throughout smaller online
communities and not to strangers
• In others, users will be willing to open their private info. to strangers, but to the
ones they better than others
The Facebook.com
• Many of social networking sites are of college age
– College oriented social networks because these networks offer wealth of
personal data of potentially great value to outside viewers and critics
– Since many college social networks require college email accounts, to
increase to sense of trust and intimacy throughout the online community
The Study
• June 2005, Gross and Acquisti downloaded 4540 Carnegie Mellon University
(CMU) Facebook profiles
• Demographics:
– 73.7% were under-grads
– 60.4% male versus 39.2% female
– 95.6% of users fall into the 18-24 age range
Types and Amounts of Info. Disclosed
Data Visibility and Privacy Preferences
• Facebook gives users opportunity to control their own searchability and visibility
–
–
“Sociological theories have noted how an individual may selectively
disclose personal info. To others in order to establish some different
degrees of trust and intimacy with them”
Facebook Data Access
Privacy Implications
• Privacy Features are provided by many social networks, especially with
Facebook, but users rarely use these features
• The main result of users not taking advantage of the privacy outlines, is
“stalking”, 860 profiles revealed their current residence, at least 2 classes they
were attending, and phone number
– Most of the online networks are stalked using AOL instant messenger
(AIM), because AIM allows users to add buddies/friends without any
notification. 77.7% of all these studied profiles contained an AIM screen
name.
Cont. Re-Identification
• “Data re-identification typically deals with the linkage of datasets without explicit
identifiers such as name and address to datasets with explicit identifiers through
common attributes.”
– A large number of the US population can be re-identified using a zip code,
gender, and date of birth.
– 45.8% of Facebook users list their birthday, current residence, and gender,
making them able to be re-identified.
– By this info. Being in users profiles, hackers can take their birth date, zip
code, and so forth, to estimate what their Social Security Number is.
Conclusion
• Facebook has become the social network king… and is about to put itself on the
in the stock market world.
• There are many risks to using Facebook (i.e. stalking)
• Studies show that there is a lot of private info. Leakage using Facebook as well as
other social networks