Facebook.com watches every move we make.
That’s right – every profile clicked and every message sent is logged into a database and saved for future reference.
The data is primarily used for marketing and never shared with or sold to private companies, according to Facebook’s public relations department at Facebook.com. 
Facebook is adamant about protecting the privacy of its users, but the issue at hand is more complex – how much privacy do Facebook, and Internet users in general, really want?
The popular social networking utility first overstepped its boundaries in 2006 with the introduction of the News Feed – an application intended to broadcast most of the routine activities users performed on the site to other users.
Facebook users came together to protest the News Feed application, and within a week, nearly 800,000 members joined a group protesting the application. In response, Facebook’s staff created a modest set of privacy controls that allowed users to partially opt out of the service.
The privacy options have been expanded, and these days, users can choose which activities get posted on their friends’ News Feed; but Facebook’s privacy woes don’t stop there.
Facebook was once again the center of privacy-related issues in late 2007 when intrepid software engineers discovered code in a new Facebook application that looked at the data stored on users’ computers and reported them back to Facebook. 
The application was “Facebook Beacon” and it was intended to further integrate the social networking utility into users’ lives. The application was also partially intended to target ads so that companies could market directly to the consumers who would be interested in their products.  
Through the Beacon program, Facebook and its initial partners tracked and recorded user transactions. The program scanned hard drives specifically for Facebook login files containing the users’ login names.  The login name would tie the transaction to the user, and the information would end up posted on the user’s profile.
Subversive use of personal data for marketing is fairly common on the Internet. Google.com uses the content of users’ Google mail messages to decide which ads will be featured in their Gmail windows. Facebook, however, took things a step further and tied the information to a user’s profile, thereby allowing others to see these transactions.
The situation caused an Internet backlash. Advocacy groups, such as Moveon.org, came forward to protect the rights of Facebook users.
Facebook assured its users that the Beacon application was completely optional and could be controlled by privacy settings, but the issue was not that users’ private information was being displayed, but that it was being scanned at all.
If this happened in the real world, there would be no questions as to the ethical problems with Facebook’s technique.  
This is the Internet though, and the rules are different.
The Internet is an odd social thing because it functions as both a public and private entity at the same time.  People feel they are anonymous and hidden and often act out in their anonymity.
The reality is very few things on the Internet are truly private, and social networking sites such as Facebook and Myspace.com are prime examples. 
Facebook feels private because it is incredibly user-friendly and lures its users into the false belief that their information is seen only by their friends.
Many users may not realize people outside of their selected social groups can see their information, and few users take the time to adjust their privacy options to opt out of an application that will display their private information.
Some psychologists have attempted to explain this as a problem regarding the transfer of social cues that tells people how to act.
The Internet restricts users from reading the social context of their actions. 
It’s similar to the reason sarcasm doesn’t seem to work through instant messaging – you can’t really convey it through text or images alone because the context is lost.
Research has given a possible why, but the other details about social networking sites are unknown.
Social researchers have yet to pin down the mechanisms or possible consequences of social networking sites like Facebook.  In fact, they haven’t even discovered many of the implications of the Internet itself.
Data gathered from surveys indicate Internet users are concerned with their privacy, but the popularity of social networking sites conflicts with those data.
Companies get around privacy issues by claiming data will not be sold to outside groups, and there really isn’t anything that can be done about it. 
The issue may not lie with the intent of companies, but in the awareness of users to the risks. 
Sites like Facebook are required to have privacy controls, and users ultimately have a say about what personal information is posted online.
Facebook’s initial privacy settings are weak at best, and the site makes little effort to inform users of the privacy settings – privacy takes away from the integration of the site into users’ lives.
Sites like Facebook offer users the opportunity to connect with old friends and expand their social connections but often prey on the lax attention of users.
Internet privacy is an issue that goes beyond random strangers seeing a user’s current relationship status – without discretion, users may open themselves up to identity theft and the compromise of their safety.
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Contact Skylar Gremillion at [email protected]