PRIVACY ON FACEBOOK

PRIVACY ON FACEBOOK

“Nothing you do is being broadcast; rather, it is being

shared with people who care about what you do

— your friends.”

1. Abstract

In this report we will examine the findings from our semester long investigation of privacy on

the social networking site, Facebook. To arrive at our findings, we compared privacy options to

other sites, interviewed Facebook users, and surveyed the information listed on profiles. We will

also explore why people use Facebook, what benefits they gain from it, and how breeches of

trust may or may not have affected use and participation in Facebook.

2.Introduction

Facebook is a social networking web site that primarily serves college students in the United

States. It launched in February of 2004 to several Ivy League schools, and has since expanded to

over nine million registered users to become the seventh most trafficked site on the web

(Wikipedia). From 2004 to October of 2006 Facebook was available only to users with a university

email address. In October of 2006, this restriction to universities was lifted. Users are part of

networks, which can be schools, companies, or physical locations. Viewing profiles of other

members is limited to the current networks of the user, or “friends” in other networks.

The type of information shared on Facebook varies between users, but may include things like

contact information, interests and activities and employment information. Users can upload pictures

and identify themselves and other people who appear in the pictures; these pictures are

then accessible via the profile of the person that was tagged. According to Wikipedia, users upload

over 2.3 million photos daily, making it the number one site for photo sharing.

Recently, Facebook added a News Feed feature which was intended to help users keep track of

what is happening with their friends. The idea was that as friends added new friends, joined

different Facebook groups, uploaded photographs, etc., these changes would be broadcast to

other Facebook friends. Though our interviews suggest that users have come to accept this feature,

it was met with considerable resistance when it was first introduced. Many members felt

that their privacy had been violated. Even though the same information was previously available

via member profiles, the fact that this information was now being aggregated left members

feeling far more exposed. The Facebook developers appeared to be caught off guard by the

negative response. As the backlash grew they eventually conceded that they had made a mistake,

and moved quickly to repair the damage by providing privacy controls for managing

one’s participation in feeds.

In the wake of the feeds debacle, Facebook developers delayed plans to open the site the general

public. Current Facebook members were encouraged to voice their concerns before the change

took place. When the previously college-only network eventually opened its doors in October,

the response was muted in comparison to the outrage over feeds.

3. Methods

Given our interest in issues such as trust and privacy, we opted against methods with a strict

usability focus, such as heuristic evaluation. Ease of use, while relevant to the user experience as

a whole, is unlikely to influence whether, for example, a Facebook user decides to share her

phone number, or a change in relationship status. As such, we turned to the following methods,

in each case with the intent to learn more about information sharing, trust, and privacy on social

networking sites in general, and on Facebook in particular:

✦ Comparative Evaluations

✦ Relevant Literature

✦ Interviews

✦ Profile Survey

Short descriptions of each method and how it was applied are provided below.

3.1 Comparative Evaluation

We performed a comparative evaluation of two sites that have similar functionality to Facebook:

MySpace and LinkedIn. For our comparison, we focused on factors related to information sharing

and privacy protection. Our findings will be covered in more detail in the section that follows,

but in general, member profiles on MySpace enjoy far fewer protections than on Facebook,

while the career-oriented LinkedIn erects more barriers to making new connections (for example,

by way of subscriber-only features) than is true on Facebook.

3.2 Relevant Literature

Though Facebook is a frequent topic in the popular press, little has been published about Facebook

in the academic literature. A notable exception is Gross & Acquisti (2005), who looked at

“actual field data about the usage and the inferred privacy preferences of more than 4,000

[Facebook] users” at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). The authors looked at the extent to

which users at CMU provided personal information. In attempt to quantify this behavior, which

they call information revelation, they note, “90.8% of profiles contain an image, 87.8% of users

reveal their birth date, […] and50.8% list their current residence”. As a measure of the validity

and identifiability of information provided by Facebook users, Gross & Acquisti determined

that 89% of Facebook profiles use real names. As others have noted, this is in contrast with online

networking sites such as MySpace (http://www.myspace.com/), where users typically

avoid the use of last names.

That Facebook users give generously of their personal information is not necessarily news. A

more significant contribution by Gross & Acquisti may be the privacy implications revealed by

their research:

It would appear that the population of Facebook users we have studied is, by large, quite

oblivious, unconcerned, or just pragmatic about their personal privacy. Personal data is

generously provided and limiting privacy preferences are sparingly used (2006).

They note that by default, profile names and images are searchable by all Facebook users, regardless

of institutional affiliation, and that full profiles are visible to all users from the same

institution. Though users have the option of exercising more control over their profiles, the

authors note that few do. Only 1.2% of users made use of the setting that limits searchability,

while fewer still (0.06%) chose to limit their intra-institution visibility.

Another contributor to the as yet thin academic literature concerning Facebook, Danah Boyd

has written extensively about the culture of social networking sites. Her commentary on the

Facebook feeds controversy encapsulated one of the emergent themes of our study, namely, that

privacy is not a simple on/off proposition:

Was all of the information in the News Feeds available to users before? Yes. That's not the

point. In the tech world, we have a bad tendency to view the concept of "private" as a single

bit that is either 0 or 1. Either it's exposed or not.

[…]

Privacy is not simply about the state of an inanimate object or set of bytes; it is about the

sense of vulnerability that an individual experiences. When people feel exposed or invaded,

there's a privacy issue (2006).

Based on the response from the Facebook community--some 750,000 members joined the group,

“Students Against Facebook News Feed”--these are not the remarks of an isolated academic.

The News Feed feature and ensuing uproar would seem to contradict Gross & Acquisti’s conclusion

that Facebook users (or at least those surveyed at CMU) are “by large, quite oblivious,

unconcerned, or just pragmatic about their personal privacy.” Have Facebook feeds exposed a

previously dormant concern over privacy? Or have previous studies simply failed to detect the

subtle edges of privacy concern?

The question of whether there is a difference between posting information and having it broadcast

is one that we would revisit during our subsequent interviews.

3.3 Inter views With Current Facebook Users

Interviews with current Facebook users served as our primary method of data collection. We

interviewed graduate and undergraduate students at two universities, the University of Michigan and the University of Iowa. We conducted nine interviews in all, in each case exploring issues

related to information sharing and privacy on Facebook. Below are a few of the main questions

posed during these semi-structured interviews (for a complete list of interview questions,

seek Appendix A):

✦ What information do you share in your Facebook profile? Contact information? Relationship

status? Political views?

✦ Are you more likely to post information on a site like Facebook rather than other places

online? Why?

✦ How do you feel about the news feed feature? Has this feature affected your willingness

to share information about yourself? Do you feel that there is a difference between posting

information online and having it broadcast? Why?

✦ What kind of privacy controls do you use?

3.4 Profile Sur vey

In an effort to gather more quantitative data, we surveyed the profiles of friends within our own

networks. We looked at 60 profiles between the three members of our project team, and in compiling

our our findings looked for patterns of information sharing (i.e. types of information that

are most/least shared via member profiles). In recognition that our sample was not exactly random,

and thus not representative of Facebook users at large, we also compared our findings

with the aforementioned Gross & Acquisti study, which looked at the profiles of over 4,000

CMU students.

4. Findings

4.1 Comparing Facebook to Other Social Networking Sites

MySpace is very different from Facebook in that it takes an all or nothing approach to displaying

information. When creating a profile, all of the information posted in that profile is, by default,

visible to all 70 million members. Users have the option of making their profiles private,

however, in doing so their information is only visible to confirmed friends. MySpace lacks an in

between layer, such as the localized networks (e.g. university affiliation, geographic affiliation)

used by Facebook.

LinkedIn occupies a slightly different space than either Facebook or MySpace, in that it is specifically

geared toward career networking. Profiles on LinkedIn display professional and academic background. Absent are personal details such as favorite movies, music, etc. In terms of

privacy, profile access follows a tiered model similar to that of Facebook. By default, users can

see the full profile of their ‘Connections’ (the LinkedIn equivalent of Facebook ‘Friends’), but

only a limited profile of others in the same network (i.e. connections of connections). Profiles of

other LinkedIn members, those outside your network, are only visible if those members have

made their profile public. In terms of making new connections, many of the features intended to

support this type of activity are restricted to paid subscribers. If you already know the email

address of the person you would like to ‘connect’ with, there is an invite feature which allows

you to do this free of charge. In cases where you do not know the email address of the person

you are wishing to connect with, features such ‘Introduce Me’ and ‘InMail’ are available on a

limited-use, subscription basis. Among the sites we reviewed, the notion of premium features is

unique to LinkedIn, and would appear to create a higher barrier to social networking than exists

on either MySpace or Facebook.

4.2 What People Share

A survey of 60 profiles of the authors’ Facebook friends suggests that users’ willingness to share

varies depending on the type of information in question. Figure 1 (below) shows the distribution

of information shared, with religious views, street address, and phone number being the

least shared items. Email addresses, birthdays, and undergraduate schools were among the

categories most often shared. It should be said, that while our sample size was relatively small

and our sampling method was not random in a statistical sense, our findings mirrored Gross &

Acquisti’s 2005 study. Notable exceptions to Gross & Acquisti included the low share rates for

street address and phone number. In the absence of formal methods, we are reluctant to draw

any firm conclusions, however, this finding at least raises the question of whether Facebook users

are less willing to share their phone number and street address than was shown previously.

Some users have general rules for what constitutes sensitive information and others have

learned from experience. S4, an undergraduate female, has a nearly complete Facebook profile

with every section of her profile filled in except her address and phone number. She explained

her decision to withhold her contact information:

"I don’t put [my] phone number or actual address… the phone number because I don’t

want strangers calling my phone, and address can be dangerous because there are crazy

people out there. It’s just safer."

Though few of the interviewees reported negative experiences resulting from their use of Facebook,

S4 was an exception. She had been contacted by a stranger who tried to communicate

with her frequently using her instant messaging screen name. In a subsequent incident, this individual

went to her place of employment to see her. Based on this experience, she has removed

all but her email address from the contact information portion of her Facebook profile.

The general opinion from users is that Facebook is a safer place to publish personal information

online than other online services. All nine interviewees said that they were more likely to post

information about themselves on Facebook compared to other web sites, including blogs, forums,

and other social networking sites.

Yes I am more likely, it’s a combination of feeling more secure and comfortable " (S1)

"I think I feel more trusting of Facebook. I guess, I don’t know, it used to be that you had to

have an account at a school, and I just feel like the creator of Facebook is trying to make it

so peoples’ information stays safe..." (S3)

4.3 Why People Use Facebook

Users expressed a variety of reasons why they used Facebook that centered on three main

points. First, that it’s beneficial to use [MS: maybe qualify this a bit, as in, socially beneficial

or...]. Second, that they can make new connections and maintain old ones that were not previously

possible. Finally, that they trust having their information with Facebook. While the third

reason isn’t a cause for use, it is a key factor that satisfies a privacy requirement in the minds of

users.

4.3.1 IT ’S SOCIAL LY BENEF ICIAL

Facebook’s benefits are derived from two basic properties: access to aggregated social awareness

information and the ability to make connections with people of interest. Our subjects told

us that they enjoyed reading the information that was posted online by their friends. With the

Facebook feeds feature, users have access to a digest of social awareness information from people

in their social circle.

"Overall I want to stay in the loop. I check birthdays, spy on high school friends, check up

on people... and poke people." (S6)

"When I first log on, I check out the feed because it tells me what’s going on. If someone

posted pictures, I check out the album, and I see if I’ve been invited to events, groups,

friend requests, etc." (S2)

As a result, Facebook users can easily track the latest information and events within their social

circles. Some of this awareness information augments gossip or other talk that happens in social

circles. Major changes to profile elements such as relationship status seem to draw attention

from other users and that information gets spread. Subjects expressed a variety of uses for this

information including: satisfying personal curiosity, sharing in conversations and gossip, tracking

accounts of younger siblings, and congratulating or consoling friends when important

events happen.

"I tend to spread the gossipy stuff. For instance, I’m on it right now and my high school

Spanish teacher is engaged, that kind of stuff" (S1)

"If someone changes their relationship status, you might mention it to them or other people,

I might follow up on pictures with the person that’s in them. It’s kind of a conversation

starter if you haven’t talked to someone in a while." (S2)

"I police my younger sister’s account! I let her know when comments in her profile or photos,

for example, are inappropriate." (S7)

Social awareness information is important for maintaining and building relationships in the offline

world. Facebook greatly enhances the ability for its users to gather and track this information,

especially in situations where a person is geographically separated from their friends.

4.3.2 CONNECT IONS ON FACEBOOK

The type of connection between friends on Facebook ranges from good friends to acquaintances.

Subjects told us that they were able to easily make new connections with people where it

may have been more difficult without Facebook. Subjects also used Facebook to revive old connections,

especially with high school classmates and old friends.

"Well people have found me and I’ve become good friends with them, and I also looked

up some old friends from 10 years ago that I haven’t seen since I moved away from

Michigan." (S2)

[I reconnected with] a friend who I used to be best friends with from 8 months old. We

stopped being friends in HS, she contacted me through Facebook a couple years ago, and

we’ve been in touch since then. I've been able to stay in contact with people I met in Australia"

(S3)

"[Facebook is] a chance to connect with classmates, for example, that you may only know

from class." (S8)

One subject estimated that about 70% of her friends in Facebook were people that she didn’t

know well prior to making the connection on Faceboook. Another subject met a romantic interest

through her participation in a Facebook group (members of this particular group were all

international students who shared the same home country). Other subjects report that the ability

to make connections in Facebook has improved their social life by meeting people of similar

interests.

Most subjects reported that they had friends in Facebook that they didn’t know particularly

well. In some cases, these people were a privacy concern. Subject s1 explained that she didn’t

post her phone number on her profile page because the people who are her friends in Facebook

aren’t necessarily the people she wants calling her. So why do Facebook users make these sorts

of connections?

In a blog entry, Danah Boyd ponders some possibilities for why we tend to accept friends that

aren’t necessarily friends:

✦ To be nice to people that you barely know (like the folks in your class)

✦ To keep face with people that they know but don’t care for

✦ As a way of acknowledging someone you think is interesting

✦ To look cool because that link has status

✦ Because its easier to say yes rather than no if you’re not sure

She goes on to point out that, “The term ‘friend’ in the context of social network sites is not the

same as in everyday vernacular,” (Boyd, 2006).

"I’m not going to lie, there’s people on there [my friends list] that I’m pretty sure I’ve never

met or don’t remember." (S3)

Given that there are varying levels of familiarity with the people on a friends list, it doesn’t

seem like Facebook users are concerned about those people having access to their information.

None of the 9 subjects told us that they used the limited profile feature to show a slimmed down

version of their profile to certain friends. While there isn’t enough information to make a conclusive

statement, we hypothesize that this is due to user feelings that what they post isn’t particularly

revealing and that they are only concerned with certain specific groups, such as employers.

4.3.3 TRUST ING FACEBOOK

Finally, users did not express any concerns with Facebook having control of their personal information,

even after a perceived breech of trust when Facebook feeds were introduced. Most

didn’t feel concerned that Facebook might share their information with 3rd parties without their

approval. This trust seemed most apparent when compared to other networking sites like MySpace.

"Yes [I trust Facebook], because I am a part of the Michigan network and only Michigan

students can see my profile." (S4)

"Yeah, I don’t have a reason not to [trust Facebook]. I don’t have anything on there that I

consider valuable." (S2)

"They are adequate, but really complicated, so I don’t always know if I’m setting everything

how I want it." (S6)

"Yes [I trust Facebook]. I wouldn't use any other social networking sites. I still feel like MySpace

is for weirdos." (S7)

A key factor in this trust seemed to be the limited scope of a network in Facebook. In contrast to

MySpace, subjects expressed more comfort with sharing information in a limited scope network.

The University of Michigan network is limited in size compared to the greater Facebook

community with 56,959 people compared to 9+ million total accounts. Our conjecture is that

while a limited network helps, this comfort is due more to the feeling of kinship with peers than

the smaller size of the network.

4.4 Outrage Over Feeds

In early September of 2006, without warning to the users, Facebook incorporated a new feature

called “news feeds.” The news feeds, displayed on users’ home pages, broadcasts a list of recent changes made by the users’ friends. “News” items

that are broadcast include most profile fields such as

interests and activities, relationship status, wall posts,

new photos, new friends, notes (journal entries), groups

joined, and comments made on photos or notes. Inability

to opt out of having information broadcast as well as

the suddenness led to outrage among members. Facebook

groups were created to protest the feeds, with one

group reaching over 950,000 people in several days.

The strong reaction to the feeds was unexpected by

founder Mark Zuckerberg, who had told Business Week

several days earlier that he was not concerned about a

privacy backlash (Lacy, 2006). Figure 2 shows an image

of the News Feeds.

Subjects interviewed had the following comments on

the feeds:

“The news feeds feel so stalkerish” (S1)

“At first I was freaked out… It’s weird that something is

tracking your every move.” (S5)

“At first I found it creepy, but now I like it because I

can see really quickly if people have changed information.” (S3)

Several key aspects of the feeds led to the overwhelming outrage. First, feeds change the nature

of sharing from something one simply posts online to something that is being broadcast. Before

the feeds existed, a profile was consumed wholly, as a finished product. Now, users see a profile

as a process, where a string of items are consumed individually. Additionally, there was a shame

factor, where subjects knew that other people were going to see changes they were making, and

became self-conscious about those changes. Second, the cost for others to obtain information is

much lower than before, when potential viewers had to manually click on a profile and search

through it for changes. Last, the authors became conscious of a larger and more attentive audience.

“If I do something like change my picture three times in a row, I will delete those notices

from the feeds because I don’t want people to think I’m stupid for changing my picture so

often.” (S6)

“Before posting, I think “Do I want people to see this?” For some things, like wall posts or

comments that I make, I don’t want everyone to see them so I delete them from the feeds.”

5. Discussion

In retrospect, despite the considerable resistance at the outset, Facebook feeds now appear to be

a popular feature. Full acknowledging their failure to understand the subtly between posting

and broadcasting information online, Facebook listened to the negative responses they received.

The result was a suite of privacy controls which seem to have satisfied the majority of Facebook

users. 3 months following the implementation of privacy controls, our 9 subjects seemed to enjoy

the feature, or at the very least, have come to accept it. Facebook was able to identify the

privacy problem and after listening to their users, were able to give users the control they

needed to have much needed control over their information. This story exemplifies what we

deem as our our challenges to social network developers.

1. Communicate with your users, telegraph when something might affect their privacy.

2. Listen to your users, adapt accordingly. Admit when you’re wrong.

3. Give your users control over their information, give them the ability to opt out.

4. Innovate. Find new ways to foster social interaction, while keeping these principles in

mind

When applied to the feeds story, the launch of this feature could have gone much more

smoothly. The Facebook team might anticipated that people would feel differently about posting

information in an aggregated environment and much of the uproar could have been

avoided. Moving forward, any social network developer should feel that diligent communication

with users is a must when making changes that could potentially change the perceived

level of privacy.

6. Summary

In this investigation of Facebook, we used comparative analysis, profile surveys and user interviews

to understand what kind of information was shared, how it is controlled and how people

felt about the privacy of their information online. We found that people use Facebook because it

helps them keep track of social awareness information, make new connections, revive old connections

and all this can be done because they trust Facebook with holding and controlling access

to their information. Following the introduction of Facebook feeds in September of this

year, users were upset when their information was aggregated and presented in digest to their

the members of their friends list. We found that users felt that the entire nature of publishing

had changed from simply posting information online to broadcasting this information to their

friends. Today this means that authors are mindful of how information is posted and are mindful

that their friends are consuming this information in piecemeal as opposed to a completed

artifact. We concluded with four challenges to social network developers which centered

around communicating and understanding the reaction of users to new features and how they

pertain to privacy.

Despite being cautioned by experts, we form expectations of privacy whether the forum is public

or not. Whether this feeling is right or wrong in an online environment is beside the point.

From a development standpoint, CSCW applications dealing in personal information must be

able to meet the privacy expectations of its users. Failing to do so invites the sort of user unrest

provoked by Facebook feeds. While successful in mitigating customer outrage, Facebook lost

sight of this and had to work hard to regain the trust of its users.

Privacy