Facebook surveillance collage by i.n.kazar using elements from MaCaEs and faheemhdk on Flickr.
It seems that many people have noticed that, just as we can only achieve “safer” sex with condoms, there is no such thing as a “safe” Facebook post or comment.
A Privacy Management on Social Media Sites survey by the Pew Research Center’s Internet Project & American Life has been released, and I suspect that Facebook (and potential Facebook shareholders) are not too pleased by this trend:
As social media use has become a mainstream activity, and attention to privacy issues has increased, a new study finds that most users of social networking sites choose restricted privacy settings while profile “pruning” and unfriending people is on the rise.
Well, that would be me!
the embarrasment hatch
When I read about the impending forced “upgrade” to Timeline, and I realized that Facebook might be deciding for me which of my posts in 2009 were significant events in my life, and that the Facebook machine might choose one day that I felt really rotten and got depressed in public all over my own wall (so that the Facebook ads could start targeting me with pharmaceuticals or evangelism) … I realized that life is just too short to cull through thousands of posts made over the years to selectively delete the ones I might wish, in retrospect, I had never posted. So, rather than face potential humiliation, I …
- Started a whole new profile
- Reviewed my friends list and selectively sent friend requests to people from my new account (I ended up with about half the friends and am very happy for it)
- Set my privacy settings pretty tight
- Do not let random people send me a friend request
- Nobody can post on my wall
This process took weeks, in spurts of 20 or 30 minutes every day or two. I was thrilled to discover that via iPhoto on my Macbook I was able to set up connections to both the old and the new Facebook profiles and for the most part was able to move photo albums I wished to preserve, complete with their captions, to the new account. Sometimes that failed for unknown reasons, so I used Pick & Zip to download photos and then uploaded them to the new profile (and then had to manually re-caption them, or, in many cases, just left them uncaptioned but at least did not lose them).
And then, finally,
- I deleted my old Facebook account.
the personal data hatch
Beyond cleaning up my public profile by eliminating things I ought never to have posted, I also began in the new profile to adhere to certain privacy-protection measures. This is about keeping your personal data and information about your web browsing habits out of the hands of advertisers and “whoever” might some day gain access to the volumes of data Facebook stores about each of its account holders:
I never, ever, as in EVER, use my Facebook account to log into other sites … and never click Facebook Like buttons on other sites, and do not install any Facebook Connect apps for external sites (nor any Facebook apps at all, for that matter — no games, no Causes …). Also I have tried more extreme measures such as logging into only Facebook in one browser and doing all other web surfing in another browser … but that got damned inconvenient so , on a regular basis I delete all my facebook cookies. I think my hatches are battened down enough now to suit my purposes.
Though I’ve gotta wonder when I’m on washingtonpost.com and somehow their ads know my age and ethnic background!
the surveillance hatch
Why does any of this matter, you ask? Well, there is actually another impending intrusion to consider — soon a certain government surveillance agency will be trawling across the social networks, and any one of us could be snagged and subjected to closer surveillance, or worse.
As reported here and there over the past few months, “the FBI has begun scouting for a tool that will allow it to gather and mine data from social networks like Facebook, Twitter and blogs.” Apparently they have just noticed that news begins trending on Facebook and Twitter before a pattern of dissent or revolution might be detected by conventional surveillance. So the Feds are scrambling to get tools in place to harvest what we post in our networks, run them through giant Carnivore-style algorithms on huge servers in undisclosed locations, and then focus their sights on the names that are spit out the other end.
But, so what, what’s the big deal, you ask? If you’re not doing anything illegal why worry?
Imagine you are Facebook-friends with an American ex-pat who has married a lovely Egyptian woman, converted to Islam and moved to Cairo. Imagine that friend has some things to say about the U.S. and you comment in agreement. Imagine that in some random status update you mention a show you went to see that “bombed.” And then you post a link to an article with the word “x-ray” in it. After that you say something about a delay at an airport, and then post a link to an article about Israel. All of the above are innocent, are things Americans are allowed to talk about – there is no conspiracy going on, no violence being planned, just day-to-day Facebook chatter.
But when you string these keywords together and look at the group through the “eyes” of a surveillance algorithm — American ex-pat, Cairo, converted to Islam, bomb, x-ray, airport, Israel — likely that surveillance software will plant a fat red flag on your profile and then start tracking you and your IP address all over the WWW. This extends the threat to us as Facebook (and Twitter, and Google Plus, and other social network) users beyond the question of who has access to our personal data and what can they use it for and how much money are they making off of it. This presents the possibility of discovering oneself on a no-fly list some day. Or of being tailed as we attend religious services, community events, and so on. So it really is important to keep in mind that one day soon, most likely unannounced, the Feds will be watching you in your social networks.
As innocuous as you may think your Public posts are, remember that it is not rational people conducting the surveillance but instead there will be programmatic decisions made by software, decisions that may automatically set a response in motion that targets you, unbeknownst to you. For personal ideological reasons you may decide you wish to exercise your First Amendment rights anyhow, in the face of all this. Sometimes I do this myself. Just do it with awareness of the potential ramifications.
be conscious of privacy pitfalls
With regard to the privacy settings for individual posts on Facebook … mine default to Friends only. However, since I also wish to continue to build up a public profile as a socio-political thinker and commentator (in the citizen journalism sphere), I have left some “Info” on my profile public, and I do change the privacy settings on selected posts to Public.
- BE CAREFUL #1: Once you set one post to your wall to Public, that setting will stick for subsequent posts. Remember to change it back if you are concerned about your privacy.
- BE CAREFUL #2: When you comment on someone else’s status, link or photo, first take note of the symbols that reveal whether their post shows to the Public vs. Friends Only. If the privacy setting of their post is “Public, so is your comment! If the privacy or their post is “Friends of Friends,” think of it as being “Public” since people you do not know can read your comments, and share the post onto their own wall. Even if the privacy is set to “Friends only” that means the friends of your friend, who may not also be your friend! Commenting on someone else’s post without thinking through the privacy implications is a privacy pitfall that’s very easy to overlook.
As much as I am known to gripe about Facebook, the value of this worldwide network is undeniable in terms of connecting humans to humans and advancing social change. For me personally, I also belong to a couple of small Facebook groups that truly enhance my life via the information shared to me and the moral support I enjoy from some wonderful people. I will not be dumping my new Facebook profile any time soon, but I will definitely aim to keep this profile “clean” and “safer.”
