Bre's Blog: IT#4: Social Networking privacy issues you may not have considered... -brennels

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October 21, 2006

IT#4: Social Networking privacy issues you may not have considered... -brennels

With the rise of social networking sites, the issue of privacy continues to be a hotly debated topic. Oftentimes the news likes to bring to the forefront issues of stalking and I would be willing to bet a majority of UofM students in any classroom could tell you what the term “facebook stalking” means.

While browsing the net I found two interesting articles one on Xanga and one on Myspace describing ways in which to track who looks at your profile. There are some differences between the two, namely the Xanga one is built into the website, while the Myspace tracker is produced by a third-party company called “Trakzor”. The basic idea behind them is the same however; you can see the profile of everyone who is viewing your page, and you can see how often they have frequented your page. The Trakzor version even gives you an option to track via google maps who has been viewing your page.

While I think these features are helpful if you feel you are being stalked and are concerned about your safety, they raise a couple interesting issues worth think about:

First of all, although the nature of social networking sites can be debated, it is generally agreed upon that part of their allure draws from their ability for people to easily meet new people. Xanga’s use of an in-site tracking system will undoubtedly affect their site traffic by discouraging people to browse new users, for fear of being labeled as a “stalker”. Myspace traffic will probably not be affected as much, unless they come out with their own in-house software.
Second, this kind of tracking can be seen as privacy infringement by those who are being tracked. This would be a better argument for those using Myspace because this ability is not promoted by the site, and thus users may be tracked without any knowledge. This is interesting because it is turning the tables on who has privacy concerns. This issue brings up the debate of weather or not a user has the right to pinpoint the home address of everyone that views their page. One on hand it is the user’s personal site, but on the other hand by posting their profile it is public information and there is an ability to make a private profile if someone was really concerned about privacy.

I think this is a debate that isn’t going to end anytime soon, as the growth of social networking sites always carries with it the weight of “privacy”.

Posted by brennels at October 21, 2006 02:27 PM

Comments

Wow. Really nice post. I learned a lot. Really.

Posted by: samoore at October 22, 2006 11:47 AM

Informative post. Yes, though the main purpose of social networking sites may be easily meet new people, day by day these sites are exploited for other purposes. In case of legal violations it would be good to have such tracking tools.

Posted by: google_success@yahoo.com at October 31, 2006 04:04 AM