No News is Good News - Images

These are some images I found which link directly and indirectly to the article.

No News is Good News - Facts

Upon researching into Facebook, its privacy settings and any relevant statistics, I found many facts which could influence the outcome I will eventually produce. Some of these are found on the Facebook infographics I recently posted.

Facts (The ones highlighted in bold relate more to the article I found).
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Nearly 40,000 Facebook users signed up for a $1,000 Ikea gift card offer and joined a related Facebook fan page and were duped into providing personal information on an outside Web site including their birth date and home phone number.
news.cnet.com

Facebook has not been able to screen all of its ads. It hasn't done a great job of vetting which ads are safe and which are not. As a result, you may get an ad in your profile when you are browsing around one day that has malicious code in it. In fact, earlier this year, there was an ad with malware that asked people to download antivirus software that was actually a virus.
news.cnet.com

The personal details of more than a fifth of Facebook’s estimated 500 million users have been “leaked” to the internet by campaigners highlighting its “terrifying” privacy fears. The list, which has been published in a downloadable file, contains the URL of every searchable Facebooks user’s profiles, their names and unique ID. Campaigners warned the list, published on “Pirate Bay”, the world's biggest filesharing website, affected more than 100 million users on the social networking site. But its publication provoked concern from privacy experts who said it proved Facebook’s “confusing” privacy settings were still apparent. But the company defended its privacy settings and denied any “private data” had been made available or comprised, saying the information was already available.  www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/facebook

Facebook's privacy policy has grown significantly over time. It is now longer than the United States  Constitution. 
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/13/technology  

Almost half of Denmark has an active Facebook profile (2,421,380 people out of 5,484,723 total).
www.facebakers.com  

On October 24, 2007, Microsoft announced that it had purchased a 1.6% share of Facebook for $240 million, giving Facebook a total implied value of around $15 billion (at the time).
www.microsoft.com/Presspass/press/2007/ oct0710-24FacebookPR.mspx  

More than 150 million people engage with Facebook on external websites every month
http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics


A recent survey of 500 top colleges found that 10% of admissions officers acknowledged looking at social networking sites such as Facebook to evaluate applicants. Thirty-eight percent of admissions officers said that what they saw negatively affected the applicant.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122170459104151023.html  


More than 150 million active users access Facebook through mobile devices across 200 mobile operators in 60 countries.  
www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics


Court notices and summons sent through Facebook are legal and binding in Australia.


A teenager from Hertfordshire who mistakenly posted her address and phone number on Facebook to publicise a birthday party ended up with 21,000 promised guests. Rebecca Javeleau, 14, mistakenly made the details public when inviting friends to the event, creating an internet sensation that led to thousands of RSVPs from strangers.
www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/facebook  


More than 10 million photos have been uploaded to the site to date.
http://techcrunch.com/2009/02/22/  


In 2006, Yahoo offered Zuckerburg (owner of Facebook), $1 billion which he refused. In 2009, it was valued at $4 billion. Recently, it has been valued between $7.9 - $11 billion. However, current valuations of Facebook are upwards of $20 billion.


In 2004, Mark Zuckerburg and co-founders Dustin Moskovitz, Chris Hughes and Eduardo Saverin launched Facebook from their Harvard dorm room.
www.facebakers.com  


The average Facebook user is 38 years old (higher than what you would expect).


Facebook has become so popular, psychologists identified a new mental health disorder: Facebook Addiction Disorder.
www.fenichel.com/facebook  


There are more than 150 million active users currently accessing Facebook through their mobile devices and people that use Facebook on their mobile devices are twice as active on Facebook than non-mobile users.
http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics 

No News is Good News - Words

I thought of several words which had some relation to the topic of the article - in this case, Facebook.

Facebook
Privacy
Crime
Theft
Social
 Friends
Interaction
Family
Personal
Identity
Network
Information
Security
Public
Data
Online
Connect
Content
Policy
Details
Exploit

No News is Good News - Infographs

These are some Facebook infographics displaying some of the aforementioned statistics and some facts that people may not have heard of.

No News is Good News - Statistics

50% of active users log on to Facebook in any given day

- Facebook

About 70% of Facebook users are outside the United States

People spend over 700 billion minutes per month on Facebook

23% of Facebook users don't know about the site's privacy controls, or don't bother to use them.

42% have shared their date of birth.

- Telegraph

14% have made their address available.

- Telegraph

36% of people use Facebook to update people on their whereabouts.

- Telegraph

35% count down to events such as holidays by updating their status

- Telegraph

69 percent of Facebook’s monthly visitors worldwide either look at or upload photos

- comScore data

46% of Denmark has a Facebook account

- http://www.facebakers.com/facebook-statistics/denmark

Up to 39% of social network users admit to being “cyber-bullied”.
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_network_service (cite note 41)


1 in 13 people have a Facebook account.
- http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-10720270

The average user…

… has 130 friends

… 'likes' 9 pages every month

… has joined 12 groups

… writes 25 comments a month

… sends 8 friend requests a month

No News is Good News - Opinions

I asked several people their own opinions on the article I posted aswell as any related articles too. I asked them whether they believed Facebook's privacy and security policies are fine as they are and its the users fault what information they post or whether Facebook should do more in order to combat incidents such as burglaries. For example, not allowing you to display your address, mobile number etc as potential criminals can use this for their benefit.

Where will this end? How about you come home from holiday to find that your home has been broken into, and your insurance company turns round to you and informs you that because you sent your parents a postcard you've advertised the fact that you were away to all and sundry and therefore your insurance policy is null and void? Seriously, where does it end? It doesn't matter who you tell, or how you tell people. Your contents are insured against crime. Telling your friends via Facebook, text, or over a coffee at the local coffee store that you're going away on holiday does not and SHOULD NOT mean that you deserve to be burgled, and that your premiums should be loaded as a result.

- jamies (Telegraph forum)

Its stupid when people put their full address, phone number and everything about themselves on their profile. And also when people make those groups for collecting phone numbers off people and everybody puts their phone number out in public for anyone to see, that is stupid.

- Rory

Numbers, addresses anything like that that makes you vulnerable to others.

- Chrissy

Honestly I think its the users fault for displaying their whereabouts and where they're going on holiday, what kinda people do that? Silly, silly people! I also think that people who are quite a bit older should be the only ones that should be allowed to display addresses and phone numbers -  they're the most responsible and hopefully not silly enough to put details about going on holiday etc.

- Shauna

They shouldn't let you put your address, I've seen people as young as 12 years old display it on Facebook. It's stupid, if people wanted to know where you lived, they could ask you and if you knew/trusted them you could just tell them.

- Hannah

As long as you're happy with your Facebook privacy settings, and you're happy with the information which you're displaying to visitors to your profile I see no problem. I display quite a lot of personal information of my profile such as my mobile number, but again my privacy settings are really tight and only my friends (which are my friends, not just randomers) can see the information. However, I would like to see a more default setting for privacy; considering I had to actually manually edit the settings which was quite time consuming, and many users don't have the time nor the motivation to make their profile secure. Also I've viewed my profile from an outside prospective and there is still bits of information I can't disable such as my networks, which contains my school.

- Ryan

I think Facebook could be make it more clear of the available privacy settings, however, ultimately it is the responsibility of the users to make sure that they don't display information that could be exploited. A lot of people bypass the terms and conditions of the website aswell as ignoring potential risks that could jeopardise security, which is naive at best and ignorant at worst.

- Lizzie

The simple matter is that you shouldn't add people you don't know and If you don't know that you can trust the people on your friends list there are features put in place so you can be very specific who does and doesn't see your posts. In regards to having your personal information on display for everyone to see, thats just stupid and the people who do that should be getting robbed. Have some common sense.

- Luis

It just never seems to end with facebook. Privacy is some kind of blind spot with them. I am so glad I left.

- "seasideman" (Telegraph forum)

i think that there isn't really much more they can do. the facebook security is pretty good, just not everyone chooses to use it. In this case i think it was just unlucky because the family happened to know the person but i dont think it would be come a regular thing for houses to be burgled. you've just got to trust the people your friends with and not have strangers on your account. i dont see what difference it makes if the insurance companies look at the account.

- Kirsty 

I think the security is fine, as long as you take care to change your security details to their strictest settings and make sure you ammend them whenever facebook updates and alters things. And obviously don't publish your address

- Peter

I found it a laborious task to change my settings back after the last roll out. My information is for the people I have accepted as friends, this includes, my status updates, pictures and information. I fiercely guard my privacy in an online world. As it is, I keep my personal information on there to a minimum to reduce the amount of information that is in the public domain through the changes that have been brought about. They should be simplified and security should be increased, not everyone is technoligically savvy and may not realise what information is being shared. A cynic would say they were exploting this!

- Liam1709 (Guardian forum)

If you use Facebook, you click Account -- Privacy Settings -- then set everything to "Friends Only". Honestly, is that really so hard? If you still disagree with that, then don't use Facebook. (Click Account -- Account Settings -- Deactivate Account.) Again, very simple. I don't know why the media is kicking up such a fuss about this. I'm sorry, but if people are too stupid to figure things out, it's no good blaming the website. It's perfectly simple. Don't blame other people because you can't figure things out. It literally takes 30 seconds to secure your privacy settings/set them to be as public as you like.

- Speranza86 (Guardian Forum)

Interesting this privacy thing. I wonder how many of those complaining against a potential loss of privacy have their landline phone number and home address listed in the Yellow Pages? For decades this hasn't bothered most people.

- DrianW (Guardian Forum)

I don’t think people are being “reckless” with their personal information. It is unfair if they can reject applications for insurance claims because it is trying to stop people from having freedom of speech – people are too careful about what they say. Then again, you should have your profile private to prevent such incidents and should only have friends you actually know, not burglars.

- Nicole

No News is Good News - Research

Before reading week, we were given a brief which required us to produce a body of research based upon a headline from a newspaper bought on Saturday 23rd October. We needed to choose a headline which would create an interesting and engaging amount of information as it would inevitiably be the basis of our next brief.

After looking at several newspapers, there was one particular article which caught my attention. There have been ongoing news stories about the privacy (or lack of) on Facebook and the restrictions in which Facebook put in place. However, this particular article warned Facebook users of burglary risks due to the amount of personal information posted on the site. I found the following in 'The Daily Telegraph':

The Daily Telepgraph - Page 13

Although information such as your date of birth may seem harmless, if it fell into the wrong hands, it could enable a criminal to commit identity theft or even steal from your own home (as Facebook even allows you to display your address). Many believe this is down to the user and their own common sense but others have complained and believe Facebook are too lenient and should not allow their users to display such information.

As this was an ongoing news story, I could not find similar articles in other newspapers on the same day, apart from one in Daily Star. I found other articles online, however, which are dated throughout this year. 

Daily Star - Page 25

Links to different articles

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/facebook/7915572/Facebook-security-fears-after-private-details-of-100m-users-leaked-to-web.html

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1323027/Facebook-holiday-plans-face-insurers-crackdown-posting-details-invites-crooks.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/may/27/facebook-privacy-settings-red-herring

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10117106