Social networking sites pit marketers against personal privacy

Social networking sites like Facebook have emerged as custom-made databases for targeted advertising, but legal experts warn the personal information placed on these sites puts users at risk for endless privacy violations, including identity theft. "My guess is users don't understand that they are agreeing to a lower privacy threshold for the use of their information for commercial purposes," David Young, a partner at law firm Lang Michener LLP told delegates at the Internet Law: the Second Wave conference in Toronto last week. "These sites should have a privacy policy that is more forthcoming in explaining how information can be used." People share a surprising amount of personal information on these sites, including contact details, age, socio-economic status, education, employment information, health information, trips that they have taken, activities they enjoy, and products they have purchased, as well as information about their peer group. So it's no surprise that marketers have begun mining such sites for consumer information, as well as target ads within the sites. "The dynamic and interactive nature of the sites allows marketers to create a buzz about a product," said Young, noting marketing strategies include targeted marketing, word of mouth/viral marketing, product review blogging, and "fan" pages where marketers can create a page within Facebook that provides product reviews and "news feed" stories. One application, the Facebook Beacon, can send automatic messages to a Facebook user's friends that detail the user's activities on a marketer's web site, such as a product purchase. Facebook also features social ads that promote websites or Facebook pages, including attachments from news feeds, and "friend to friend" messages about a product. As well, Facebook includes polls that serve as targeted surveys and provide a quick response about attitudes and wants -- information that is of value to marketers. Social networking sites also serve as a medium for business-to-business networking, as a "finder" database for business information searches, as a vehicle for small businesses to promote their services, and as a means of internal networking for a company's employees. And businesses use social networking sites to verify information about job applicants, and at the same time, exploit the sites to recruit talent by creating pages for users to interact and seek information from sources, including a company's employees. "Job applicants may be encouraged to post comments and questions that will be responded to by the prospective employer," said Young. "It may look like a chat room about a company is self-generated, but it may be that a business is actually behind it. It's a stealth technique." While social networking site users undoubtedly understand they are making personal information accessible to others (that's what social networking is all about), they may not be fully aware of who can access their profiles. For instance, Facebook users usually choose to be part of a network of friends, but it can open their profiles to anyone else registered in the same geographic area. "The initial networks were narrow entities such as universities, but now include the Greater Toronto Area," said Young. "Users can opt out of sharing their information in a network, but have to choose to opt out, otherwise the information is made available across the network." Opting out is the key. Because users voluntarily place personal information on social networking sites and choose the network they belong to, it seems perfectly legal for marketers to make use of it. The more serious problem, however, is that people will use social networking information for privacy violations much more serious than targeted marketing, like identity theft, or worse. The solution is for users to limit access to their profile only to specific friends to avoid being a target of any kind.

Social networking sites pit marketers against personal privacy

Broadcast | April 3, 2008

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