Facebook in duel with people's privacy

Nobuho Nagasawa, Japanese, Da Nang

As a user of Facebook since 2009, I have experienced many changes in the social network. To become the world's largest social community and expand its membership base, Facebook understands that it has to offer more kinds of information to users.

Therefore, after so many redesigns, I feel the privacy of users is being seriously violated. The things I want to mention here, are Apps and Facebook features.
Firstly, to enrich activities on Facebook, users are given some tools to create many kind of applications: games, puzzles, quizzes, entertainment and comedy.

People find it interesting but they become trapped by each other. Before using any apps (applications) on Facebook, user must sign an agreement (by clicking an OK form) that they approve of software accessing all their data.

This means their information is gathered and posted it on a "friend's" wall without any updated acknowledgement. This is dangerous.

Secondly, Facebook is now changing into a stalking machine. A new feature displays people's activities on other people's walls. Previously you could hide it, but now you cannot and whatever you do, other friends can track your activities.

Now you have virtually no privacy. They call this feature "Ticker". "A" comments on "B", "A" posts something on "B"s wall. The problem is, we can read what they write, we can see what they like and we know what other users are doing even though we don't have them on our friend list.

Just imagine that every day groups of persons can read your information although you have set your account readable for friends only. This is a busybody machine and I feel confused.

How do you know what Facebook will do in future to protect your privacy? Now they broadcast your activities, in the future it might be our addresses and family contacts. So we have to act first by ignoring the prying of Facebook.

Lee Han Sung, Korean, Ha Noi

Being tracked on social networks? I don't really mind as I do nothing wrong. I only share things I feel safe to share, and so far there have been no serious problems.

I found something to talk to her about and interest her on our first date, although she was a little shy at the beginning. I even pretended to bump into her "by chance" in an event which Facebook informed me that she would attend. That's how we got closer.

So there's actually something good in it, at least for me. But I can imagine that Facebook could make huge profits by exploiting its power. It could make greater business by doing market surveys for some enterprises. We never know what dangers are hidden behind some seemingly unimportant features.

So the solution is to protect yourself before they bother to do so. Don't share any information that might harm your reputation or expose you to people you dislike. Don't post negative comments about your noisy bosses. And avoid praising some girls for her beauty when your jealous girlfriend is on-line.

Trang Vu, Vietnamese, Ha Noi

In my friends' eyes, my rare appearance on Facebook is enough to label me as an oddball. In actual fact, I just depend on Facebook to keep myself posted on what is going on with my friends who live far away.

What is more romantic than sending a radiant smile or a comical hug across the ocean and halfway around the earth? What is more, I want to make myself more marketable by adding Facebooks of companies or organisations. Facebook or Twitter serves only as a platform to let ones self be known to others and vice versa.

It is undeniably an ingenious invention, yet it pains me in that my inner thoughts are not hidden from prying eyes. My heart-felt feelings put into sentences on Facebook are likely to become a subject of debate to outsiders, including those who never know me.

Facebook, however, is a welcome distraction for my friends. Those who, on reading PDF files on computers, would doze off to sleep are willing to while away their time reading casual and passing comments on their friends' Facebooks. They immerse themselves in the virtual world and pay excessive attention to trivial things out of vicious inquisitiveness.

They squander their precious moments on keeping track of what's becoming of others while turning a blind eye to what is going on around them. Some even reveal that hardly does a day go by without them spending several hours reading and commenting on Facebook.

Occasionally, some "red hot"sentences or photos suddenly become the centre of attention. More often than not, Facebook becomes an ideal place to swap gossip, causing severe verbal mayhem.

Sadly to say, the network that is meant to bring people closer goes into reverse. Hence, I strongly believe that time not be wasted on useless and trivial conversations.

Dang Thanh Hang, Vietnamese, HCM City

I remember watching a cartoon TV series called Supernews! that featured popular social networking websites (Facebook, MySpace and Twitter) as talking characters on Youtube.

Facebook, my choice for social networking website, appears as a paranoid stalker who can't help following his ex-girlfriend's profile all day. He is tired of all of those people who he barely knows poking and asking him "What's up?" without really caring about him.

Although this show tends to dramatise the reality a little bit, the drama is real and I've suffered quite a lot and have come to accept it. I have more than 500 friends on my Facebook, and it's just a humble number compared to the thousands that others have.

I barely know or care to talk to most of my Facebook "friends." But that can't help me from being tagged in all kinds of advertisements, photos, and any other stuff that has nothing to do with my life or my interests.

I always feel like all of my private life is exposed to those strangers' eyes. I just have to be more careful, not only with my sayings online, but in real-life activities as well. Photos of a crazy night can be uploaded into Facebook in seconds, and a friend might innocently tag my presence in a embarrassing moment captured in some random photo, and then everyone can see it.

Then I might have to fight all the angry comments by this "friend", thus "unfriend" him on Facebook and finally lose a real friend in real life. This story is common among Facebookers. But it can be prevented if Facebookers learn to control Facebook with the tools from the provider and opt for appropriate Facebook etiquette which puts respect for privacy and personal opinions of others first.

Yota Kobayashi, Japanese, HCM City

I am not really a social network addict. I used to log on to Facebook frequently and update personal information by writing notes. But now my time is limited and I cannot enter the website as frequently as before.

I don't want to share everything on Facebook, except for trivial, harmless things. Sometimes I enter Facebook only to keep myself updated on my friends' lives while not writing anything on my page. So I do not worry much about privacy breaches.

However, in my opinion, once you join social networks like Facebook, you already accept the terms and conditions it sets down. But no one ever bothers to read these things, and this is where social network operators exploit their power.

The users, therefore, simply have to accept having their privacy breached, because they still have a choice to share or not share something, and they must be aware of that. Even if an incident is brought to court and a social network operator loses the case, the user has already suffered some "damage". So I think it's best to only share what you don't feel can harm your lives. — VNS