Today's lecture was all about social networks and just how private everything we upload really is. The main network discussed was of course, Facebook or as my partner likes to call it - ''Creepbook''. I have just checked out Creepbook's latest statistics and according to this site there are over 500 million active users. Now if you're anything like me, while signing up for this network you probably only skimmed through the Statement of Rights and Responsibilities while searching for the 'Agree' button. So what exactly can Creepbook legally do with over 500 million people's uploaded pictures, videos and other personal information?
Using Creepbook's Help Centre I managed to track down the Statement of Rights and Responsibilities as well as the Privacy Policy. What caught my eye was that all the content you upload, including information about your friends will be stored in the network's system. The Privacy policy states that if you do not want the network to store this kind of information, you need to delete it before physically uploading it. Knowing that Creepbook stores absolutely everything posted online, I come back to my original question about legal rights of users' data.
According to the Statement of Rights and Responsibilities, after an image or video is shared online, that includes you being 'tagged' in a photo "you grant us (Facebook) a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content (eg. photos) that you post on or in connection with Facebook". In other words, depending on how you have personally modified your account and privacy settings, using this "IP licence" Creepbook can legally use all your personal information for anything they like. Luckily there is a way to end this licence and that is by either deleting your uploaded photos and videos or deactivating your entire account. However if the information you have posted has been shared between your friends, unless every single one of your friends deletes all contents, Creepbook will still hold legal rights to your personal data. Personally this makes me feel very uncomfortable and I'm hesitating to upload any data onto the social network in future.
A popular aspect of Creepbook is using Applications and other websites through the social network. I have to admit that when I'm really bored I used to do some 'Quizzes' with my friends just to see what our outcome was. For every quiz we did the application sent out a notification asking for permission to access my personal information. Without a second thought I clicked 'agree' and started the quiz.
In today's lecture, my lecturer talked about these Applications and how they can not only access my own information if I accept them but also all my friends' data. As soon as the lecture finished I logged on to Creepbook and deleted all my old Apps using the privacy settings. However afterwards I realised that even if I delete every single App I have ever used, it still does not protect me from strangers creeping through my profile. All the Apps that my friends are using can still access my personal data.
The first time I heard my partner refer to this social network as "Creepbook" I laughed at him and asked why he would call it that. But the more I think about it I realize just how accurate that descriptive name really is. Not only do we need to worry about other active users and Creepbook itself stalking our every move but every single application we have ever used or page we once liked can be creeping through our personal information at any time.
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