Openbook: Is Facebook as private as we think?

Since we had no readings for class this week I was unsure of what to blog about. So I decided to blog about Openbook and the problems with Facebook's privacy policy.

If you don't already know Openbook is a website that allows you to search terms and phrases and it will pull up any recent Facebook status updates that contain those words. Openbook was created by Will Moffat, Peter Burns and James Home, three website developers based in San Fransisco and Facebook users who are concerned about the privacy of Facebook.

According to FAQ on the Openbook website they are not hacking Facebook, just using Facebook's APIs :

"We are using Facebook's documented APIs. It's a completely public API that any programmer can use. Application Programmer Interface - is a way to access data on a site. Openbook simply takes this raw data provided by the Facebook API and presents it in a human-readable form. For example compare "beach" on the Facebook API and then on youropenbook.org"

The site also contains a privacy proposal to Facebook that makes it easier for users to view and understand their privacy settings. They also suggest that new profiles created are set to private by default.

In "The Evolution of Privacy on Facebook", Matt McKeon discusses the changes in Facebook's privacy settings and he has created a visual that shows the changes in the default privacy setting over time. 

Source: http://mattmckeon.com/facebook-privacy/

Source: http://mattmckeon.com/facebook-privacy/

Source: http://mattmckeon.com/facebook-privacy/

Source: http://mattmckeon.com/facebook-privacy/

Source: http://mattmckeon.com/facebook-privacy/

Source: http://mattmckeon.com/facebook-privacy/

Another interesting article is an article by Kurt Opsahl called "Facebook's Eroding Privacy Policy: A Timeline" In it he takes excerpts from Facebook's privacy policies over the years in order to highlight how Facebook has slowly taken our privacy away. He ends his article with the following statement:

"Viewed together, the successive policies tell a clear story. Facebook originally earned its core base of users by offering them simple and powerful controls over their personal information. As Facebook grew larger and became more important, it could have chosen to maintain or improve those controls. Instead, it's slowly but surely helped itself — and its advertising and business partners — to more and more of its users' information, while limiting the users' options to control their own information."

In my opinion Facebook should alert all of their users when they make a change to any policy. The following is an excerpt from Facebook's current privacy policy in the section on changes:

"If we make changes to this Privacy Policy we will notify you by publication here and on the Facebook Site Governance Page. You can make sure that you receive notice directly by becoming a fan of the Facebook Site Governance Page."

It's great that they have a way to inform us of changes and they clearly state that in their policy, but how many people do you honestly believe read the entire policy. There are currently 1,632,731 people who "like" the Facebook Site Governance Page. Facebook has over 500 million users worldwide. That is a lot of people who are left in the dark about policy changes.

Finally let me demonstrate through screenshots how Openbook works.

Here is my Facebook wall with a recent post by me.

I go to Openbook and take a couple of keywords from my most recent status update which in this case will be"Chinese buffet."

I simply click the search button and BAM! there is my post with my name and picture along with anybody else who has been talking about Chinese buffet.

So hopefully this will make you consider about what you are posting on Facebook.