Something that I recently discovered through the knowledge of a friend is that my personal information was being sold and distributed by facebook officials to their sponsorship companies. By examining my information they can view my hobbies, my likes, my dislikes, my habits and much more. With this knowledge, I noticed that the companies were post advertisements in the side margins of my facebook page trying to sell me merchandise based on what they learned about me through my information that I posted on facebook. For example, I posted that I loved to be active and that running was my favourite activity. Shortly after, I began noticing individualized advertisements posted based towards my likes, such as expensive running shoes and workout attire, all over my facebook. Although this is an intrusion of your personal privacy and an uncomforting presence of others knowing to much about you, I do believe that by signing up to facebook you are agreeing to lose certain privacy rights which is ultimately your decision to proceed with or not. However, it would be morally correct if facebook made it more clear to individuals who were not computer savvy what information will be kept private and what information will not be kept private, which facebook ultimately does not make clear.

Although facebook does indeed infringe on people’s privacy to an extreme extent, I do agree with the use of facebook to locate criminals, such as pedophiles, drug dealers, rapists etc. Unfortunately we do have to lose a certain amount of our privacy to facebook if we want facebook to be used as a tool to catch these criminals. On the positive side, Facebook has been successful in the location of a mass amount of criminals and will keep doing so which I think is an incredible criminal justice movement. For example, as a university student studying criminology, I am unable to count the amount of times that university parties and “keggers” have been cancelled and in some cases resulted in the arrest of the party holder due to selling alcohol to minors. These parties were more than likely discovered on facebook by police officers.

On the other hand, facebook can be a negative contribution in regards to assisting with the location of criminal activity. For example, a young female named Camille Cacnio was identified on facebook stealing a pair of pants during the 2011 Vancouver Riot. She soon after admitted to stealing the pants and apologized for her actions to the world over facebook. Once she went public her whole life changed. She was a 23 year old student trying to get an education but unfortunately made a bad choice which will stick with her for her entire life. Shortly after she was charged, she dropped out of school, was fired from three different jobs, and along with her family had been forced to leave her hometown through various forms of bullying and threats. The concern with this case was that she had a clean criminal record up until the 2011 Vancouver riot looting incident but due to a criminal justice technique called “crowd-sourced policing” the public made Camille and her family suffer on a greater scale than necessary. Crowd-sourced policing can be described as a way for the public to target individuals, collect personal information about them, and identify these people through online sources such as facebook. Yes, Camille should have had to go through the legal system for the crime she committed; however, the social harm that her and her family had to suffer from for years was not part of the justice system and was not a necessary part of her sentencing. Fortunately, the sentencing judge felt the same way and spared Camille of any jail time due to the personal trauma she experienced from her peers and strangers who harassed her.

Another issue lies with the reality of facebook officials deliberately viewing facebook members emails, chat information and profile data with a specific software that searches members statuses as well as what they chatted about among their friends. This is how facebook officials say they are searching for potential or existing criminals. However, as I stated earlier, this is a way to locate individual’s information and sell to sponsors, such as viewing an individual’s favourite shopping centers then advertising merchandise located in that shopping center. This becomes an issue for most individuals because it feels as though there privacy is being breached.

This also becomes an issue when individuals are trying to find a job. It is very easy for a hiring manager to search the name of a potential candidate for a position and to find out personal information about them which ultimately becomes the deciding factor to hire or not to hire them. Yes, there are privacy settings you can set to block your name from being searched. However, if you are attempting to be a police officer for example hiring managers have the power to override those privacy settings to search your entire profile.
It is important to protect your identity and your information. If you do decide to become a facebook member or remain a facebook member after learning this information, remember to be very careful what information you make public. It is also crucial to remember to avoid posting inappropriate photos that could negatively affect you in the long run. To become more knowledgeable about the information that you can protect is a step in the right direction but unfortunately does not mean you can have the full privacy most individuals would like.

Thank You!

We expect Facebook to change their site, as they always do. We also expect to update our product to make it work again. Not much different than other products with dependencies.

Cheers!