Facebook Privacy Issues
Since the Facebook is launched it is constantly under fire by its critics for its privacy policy issues. The dark clouds of ad sales and privacy concerns of users kept hovering over the company and nothing significant has been done so far in order to curb this situation.
A large number of its users don not trust the privacy policy of Facebook though its usage figures are increased up to more than 900 million users over the years. Out of the total users, 59 percent have shown dissatisfaction with the company’s privacy policy.
The concern of most of the users is genuine as Facebook is hosting a lot of information about them. According to the Facebook stated policy, it maintains multiple activities of a single user such as, login details, machines used for login and location details etc. So, every user remains concerned about his privacy on the website. Most of such information is available on the timeline of each user and is readily accessible too.
And then there is data that Facebook collects without the user’s knowledge, and none of them expect that Facebook would be recording their activity on internet. Such as, if we surf on internet and access data from websites with Facebook powered logins, our activity has been tracked.
Recent changes in Facebook privacy policy are also astonishing as they have also started to capture information about users when they are on websites that has Facebook like button or a widget. It doesn’t matter whether you hit such features or not but Face book still keeps the record of your activity. And it maintains this data for a 90 days period.
While Facebook isn’t using this information yet for making profits by offering its advertisements. The whole strategy they have made is to make the users to be monetized and frequently check them in order to increase its profit margins. But the US government raises its concern over the whole scenario and it is pressurizing Face book team to disclose all the information related to user’s privacy to them.
Last year Facebook and Federal trade commission has signed an agreement in which Facebook team had admitted that it would disclose all the privacy details clearly to its users, and if doesn’t fulfill the terms and conditions of the agreement then it would have to face heavy penalties.
Facebook is also facing a major hurdle in selling its mobile application and the ad sale strategy of Facebook is counted as poor by its clients. General Motors has recently announced that it is going to remove its ad from Facebook as they don’t convey the message they intend to reach to the users of Facebook. According to then they have spent $10 million to display their product on Facebook, but it doesn’t effect their profit margins instead Facebook has generated revenue up to $3.7 billion in 2011. In a poll conducted by AP-CNBC the fact has been revealed that Facebook users hardly hit the ads those are displayed on Facebook page. So, Facebook has to review its policies by keeping the best interest of stakeholder in mind in near future.
