If Facebook gets its way, the little “delete account” button on your profile might not pack as much punch as it used to.
The company changed its terms at the beginning of the month to allow Facebook to archive user data, including pictures, posts and profile information, even if a person deletes his or her profile. A recent furor of dissent, however, sent site administrators scrambling to hit undo.
Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced last Wednesday that the company was reverting to its old terms of service until a more specific document could be drafted. For now, users are subject to the same terms they always were. The company has said, however, that they plan to reissue the changes after an extensive revision process.
Many Facebook users, including university students, said they should be able to control their information and where it goes, a contention Zuckerberg said was frustratingly impractical.
“People want full ownership and control of their information,” he wrote in the official Facebook blog. “At the same time … there is no system today that enables me to share my e-mail address with you and then simultaneously lets me control who you share it with.”
But the backlash from users came almost immediately, as they saw the move as a worrisome invasion of privacy. While Zuckerberg framed the change with practical applications, such as users keeping messages sent from deleted profiles, the revised terms were much broader and gave Facebook the “perpetual worldwide license” for all user content placed on the site, according to The Consumerist, the popular consumer advocacy blog that brought the new changes to light.
Some students are uneasy about what many see as a potential loss of control, an issue exacerbated by Facebook’s handling of the change, which was done without any large-scale effort to inform users.
“It’s messed up,” said freshman letters and sciences major Rob Waddail. “It’s almost like they’re tricking people. It’s your information, your identity. You should have control over that.”
Others said users should know what they’re getting into, and putting information on the Internet makes it fair game.
“I think [privacy] is extremely important. You have to know, though, that you’re essentially putting yourself on a bulletin board,” said Erik Webster, a senior aerospace engineering major. “There’s a gap between how private people want Facebook to be and how private it actually is.”
This gap has sparked rampant debate on the site, which according to the company has more than 175 million users. A Facebook “Bill of Rights and Responsibilities,” group created by the company to solicit users’ input on the issue, ballooned to more than 75,000 members and almost 9,000 posts in its first 48 hours.
The only thing users can do is control what information they make available, said Gerry Sneeringer, director of information technology security with the Office of Information Technology.
“The basic pitfall is that Facebook is all about advertising yourself,” he said. “It’s all about compromises between advertising yourself and maintaining your privacy.”
Freshman psychology major Coleia Grimes agreed.
“It’s Facebook. It’s on the Internet. You can only keep your information so private,” she said. “I don’t put anything up there that I wouldn’t want my family to see. My dad has a Facebook. If you’re worried about privacy, you shouldn’t be using Facebook.”
Sneeringer emphasized the importance of taking advantage of Facebook’s privacy settings, especially the ones that allow users to adjust who has access to their profiles.
“If you’re not careful, your Facebook page can be found on Google, but there are also settings to avoid that,” he said. “What might be cool for your friends to see on there might not necessarily be cool for a potential employer to see.”
Common sense is the key to maintaining user privacy, Sneeringer added.
“People need to think long and hard about what they put on the Internet, because once it’s there, it’s out of your hands,” he said. “You can’t run from your Internet life.”
abdilldbk@gmail.com
