Facebook users beware...

Another day, another Facebook story in the news. Today Facebook has finally rolled out its new privacy settings for all its users. Before the global roll out of the privacy settings, Mark Zuckenberg of Facebook, introduced and explained the new privacy settings to its user via an open letter. According to Zuckenberg, the aim of the new privacy settings is to simplify the latter to users, no doubt, with a view to making them more accessible and less confusing to its users following many complaints including the one from the Canadian Privacy Commissioner.

Hence the new privacy settings are supposed to be clearer, easier to use and more effective at protecting the personal data of Facebook users. However, as rightly pointed out by the EFF, the new settings push users to share their information further. For more on this, see the illuminating article from the EFF which has links to further information.

If you thought that only your friends/network could read your status updates, then you will soon be wrong!

It has been reported today that both MySpace and Facebook have signed a deal with Google which will allow its users` publicly available status updates to be fully searchable on the search engine. Google has a similar agreement with Twitter and it is reported that the new agreement with Facebook and MySpace will go live in a few days.

This is a very worrying development for MySpace and Facebook users who have had no say in this matter and will now have their status updates fully searchable and visible on Google to all and sundry if they have not changed their default privacy settings. Past research has shown that most Facebook users use default privacy settings (rather than higher ones) which means that their accounts are fully visible to the rest of Facebook users in their networks. This new deal will also mean now that their updates will be fully indexed and searchable via Google. Cyber Panda thinks that in the new few days, Facebook/MySpace users as well as privacy bodies will raise the alarm bell which will force the companies to either rethink this deal or provide more protection for users` data.

i2015 or the New EU Digital Strategy

The New EU Digital Strategy which is currently being shaped by the EU will put consumers at the core of i2015, the EU`s action plan for digital economy. In effect, this means creating a consumer-friendly single market for online services.

Relatedly, the new incoming Spanish EU President is also shaping his digital agenda which is rumoured to make the use of VoIP mandatory on mobile handsets. If this does happen, it will no doubt have a significant impact on traditional telecom service providers as well as on principles of net neutrality. i2015 should be delivered in spring 2010 so not long to go now before we can ascertain its detailed contents.

Wikipedia`s spiral of death?

Dear All
Yet again, the doctorate has taken over my whole life leaving with not much time to blog anymore!! However, now that things have slightly calmed down, I will try to blog more frequently. The operative word being try!!

An interesting research has been carried out by Ortega on the fall of the number of editors of Wikipedia and the reasons for such fall. He also predicts that this worrying trend is likely to continue. The Times also reports some infighting between Wikipedia writers which may also explain the downward spiral in the number of editors (alongside lack of time and reaching saturation point in terms of articles). It will be interesting to see how Wikipedia fares for the next year and the implications if the downward trend continues. It could also be that this research provides an added bonus for either more volunteer editors or for existing ones to contribute more if the main reason for the downward spiral is lack of time.

A new blog is born: FBHive!!

CyberPanda is loving the new blog FBHive which deals with all things related to Facebook: the news, the rumours, and the controversies!! And this new blog has started with a bang as it has disclosed a major security flaw which enables any user to access the basic information of other users even when such information has been protected by its owner (via privacy settings). Amazingly, the blog reports that it took Facebook 15 days to deal with this issue!!!

The flaw has now been fixed but you can still see how it could have been done in the past by checking out the FBHive blog. Amazing footage!!! As a security expert from Sophos has noted, what is worrying is that such a flaw existed and that users` data have been at risk for an unknown period until the flaw was fixed. In addition, users do not whether their data have been 'hacked' into by any other user in this manner. So many privacy issues are raised by this latest Facebook related issue.

From Digital Britain to Twitter.

It has been a long time since CyberPanda has written a post but she has been trying to put together a massive chapter and hence the prolongued absence.

However these past few weeks have been full of technology-legal news: where does one start? The UK Digital Report has been published last week attracted some criticisms regarding its proposals which many view as just not being enough.

The world has not been the same since the Iranian elections and the elections have rocked the world of Twitter as the latter has become a very important forum of exchange of information and views on what is currently taking place in Iran. Many Iranians are able to tell the world what is happening via Twitter and this is becoming even more important with news today that the BBC`s correspondent in Tehran has been asked to leave Iran and other alleged reporting restrictions.

Finally and on different note, the alleged cybersquatting of Facebook`s newly launched username option where third parties are alleged registering the names of well-known persons with a possible view to reselling those at a later stage.

CyberPanda will definitely try to post more often in the future!!

Proposals for monitoring social networking sites

There is an outcry today by privacy activists about the government`s proposal to monitor social networking sites such as Facebook and Bebo. Under the proposal, the details of users of such sites will be kept in a central database which is operated by a private company.

The Government is quick to point out that it is not interested by the content of the exchanges passing between users. However, it is not clear what safeguards it will put in place to ensure that the content per se is protected from such monitoring. However, and perhaps more crucially, it still does not deal with the objections related to the use/storage of personal and sensitive data by the Government. The Government justifies this proposal on the grounds of enabling the police and security services to keep up-to-date with the technological advances. However, it seems that the proposal does not contemplate imposing conditions for monitoring such sites (e.g. a minimum threshold before the details of a user are deemed to qualify for monitoring). Under the current proposals, the Government seems to be asking for a 'blank cheque' liberty to monitor all the data of all users of social networking sites which is not commensurate with the alleged security interests.