Facebook and the Privacy Debate

Interesting Statistics (Source: Facebook):

• More than 500 million active users
• People spend over 700 billion minutes per month on Facebook
• Every month, more than 250 million people engage with Facebook on external websites
• An average of 10,000 new websites integrate with Facebook every day (2.5 million overall).

Obviously with this much traffic and external collaboration, Facebook has access to a vast amount of information about its users. A very common debate is whether Facebook should actually be allowed to have this kind of information or not. Supporters of one side of the debate are worried about a single company having this much information all in one location. They worry about Facebook having access to personal information such as email, birthdays, schools, etc. However, after all these years of watching and using Facebook, I am on the other side of this debate and ask, "Does it really matter?"

My argument is that it doesn't really matter if Facebook has this information. Companies everywhere such as credit card companies, phone companies, and banks have access to your age, email, school information, etc. It's not a new trend, yet people are so worried when it comes to Facebook having the same information. Does it really matter if someone knows a few more pieces of personal information about you? Most of the information can't even be seen and maliciously used unless the person trying to view this information is already a "friend," in which case, why did you ever "friend" this person in the first place?

I understand that some people are very concerned about what others know about them. Personally, however, I don't care much about someone knowing my school, field of study, relationship status, or interests. These are things that I gladly talk about when talking to anybody, even if I meet them for the first time at a social gathering or at a bar while talking to a girl. If someone truly wanted to obtain my information for malicious purposes, there are plenty of other ways of obtaining the data that are much easier than hacking into my Facebook. Oftentimes people, especially students, post online copies of resumes on their own personal websites. These resumes typically include email, phone numbers, addresses, and other private information that can easily be used in the same manner as the information on a Facebook profile. What's the difference?

Some people may be worried about others being able to "easily" view the information in one location, but if they are truly paranoid, they should just be following common sense privacy steps. If you conduct a Google search on "Facebook privacy", some of the first results are tips for protecting yourself from information theft (10 Privacy Settings Every Facebook User Needs to Know). Many of the people who are most worried about Facebook privacy issues are the ones who don't understand how to protect themselves in the first place. If it's that big of a deal, they just shouldn't create a Facebook profile at all.

Facebook's social network is a huge benefit to all of us. The social plugins used to embed Facebook onto other websites are useful for connecting people of similar interests and help sites become more viral. Its machine-learning procedures allow for more targeted and useful advertising without requiring human reading of the data. There are so many benefits of how Facebook uses the information that I don't see what all the fuss is about when it comes to a few security concerns that can be seen in many other websites as well.

Even a world-renowned institution like UC Berkeley was being hacked for a few years before anyone discovered the leak. The leak potentially included access to people's social security numbers albeit not matched to the actual names. This is much more dangerous in my opinion than Facebook's sharing of information. Almost any system can be hacked (and information stolen) if a hacker really wanted to. It doesn't matter if it's banks, schools, or Facebook; our information is always at risk. So why put so much blame on Facebook? Even stealing someone's cell phone/laptop (a common occurrence on college campuses) could be a lot more dangerous if the owner didn't set a password because then the thief would probably have access to all of the owner's emails. This could subsequently be used to gain access to all kinds of accounts through password recovery methods since most devices are now synced with Gmail accounts automatically.

Nevertheless, all of this is just my personal opinion. I understand that there will always be privacy concerns brought up in this debate. However, I'd like to give a person as smart as Mark Zuckerberg the benefit of the doubt when it comes to how he runs his website. Because in the end, even if this information is shared, does it really matter?