COMMENTARY | As technological advances continue to be made at an ever-increasing pace, our lives are become increasingly saturated with items such as smart phones, tablets and GPS devices. Our "world" has evolved so that is no longer a physical environment, but a digital one as well, with social networking sites such as Facebook becoming new realms in which we exist and interact with others. We are become increasingly reliant on and enamored with these technologies, but do we fully understand the risks?
Just this past week, two privacy-related issues made headlines -- one concerning Facebook and another concerning smartphones. On Wednesday, the Federal Trade Commission reached a settlement with Facebook for deceptive privacy practices and lack of transparency on what the company does with user information.
Under the settlement agreement, Facebook will not only be subject to periodic privacy audits for the next 20 years but will also be required to provide clear notice and obtain consent before any personal information is shared outside of what is permitted in a user's privacy settings. While this news is meant to be reassuring, it also leads to the question of how much of our personal information has been collected since 2006, when the social networking site opened registration to all users.
Facebook has long been under the scrutiny of advocacy groups such as the Electronic Privacy Information Center, which has been on alert since the company launched Facebook ads in October 2007. Yet, even with the public outcry over the potential misuse of user information for these ads, between November 2007 and 2011, Facebook grew its active user base from 50 million to 750 million.
The day after the Facebook settlement was announced, CNET.com reported that security researchers discovered a secret spying program on Android-based smartphones and iPhones. This program is virtually undetectable by users and kept track of what users did on their phone -- logging keystrokes, recording numbers, etc., eventually sending that data off to some third party.
The software developer, Carrier IQ, is a provider of "mobile service intelligence" and states the information collected is used by its clients to analyze service quality and better understand user behavior. These clients, often phone manufacturers, will make the argument that this data is vital for improving the service and products offered to users, but privacy experts are crying foul at this sneaky (and possibly illegal) practice.
Yet, with news like this making headlines at a rising frequency, are users likely to give up their smartphones or cancel their Facebook accounts? Not likely. For most, it seems that the value offered by these new technologies outweigh the potential risks.
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