Case Study 2

1. Do people who use facebook have a legitimate claim to privacy when they themselves are posting information about themselves?

Ans: Yes, the people do have a legitimate claim to the privacy. As of 2009 facebook made a new policy that users could control their information but the policy had a problem; there were 170 privacy options which was tiring to the users and hence was not properly effective but later in 2012 facebook had to ensure to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) that they will be giving consumers clear and prominent notice and obtaining their express consent before sharing their information beyond their privacy settings, by maintaining a comprehensive privacy program to protect consumers' information, and by obtaining biennial privacy audits from an independent third party.

2. How can using the sharing privacy controls help preserve your privacy on Facebook? In what ways is the sharing control ineffective?

Ans: Sharing privacy control will help us to preserve our privacy. It gives us the power to select individuals whom we want to share stuffs and to whom we don’t, by selecting the options in the privacy settings before sharing any information on the facebook. It had a problem; there were 170 privacy options which were tiring to the users before sharing information and hence is not properly effective. 3. How will changing your Connection settings on Facebook help protect your privacy?

Ans: By changing the connection settings one can select individuals whom we want to share our images, videos, posts and to whom we don’t. In addition we can also block the apps that we don’t want to access or reveal our information. Hence it improves our privacy.

4. Why are Facebook's facial recognition software and policies a potential threat to privacy?

Ans: Facebook’s facial-recognition tool allows users to autotag photos of their friends based on what they look like. But what was most odd about this release is that later one can gain all the images of a particular person even if he/she is not a friend with the user
Thus it is a threat to one’s privacy and raised the privacy alarm among the users.