Hannah Myers

Myers 1 Hannah Myers Prof. Neeraj Prakash ENGL 111 Communications (CF01) December 2nd, 2014 Facebook: The “No Name©” Brand of Social Media Who has a Facebook account? Who uses it purely to keep in touch with people? Who’s a fan of the apps? Games? Personality quizzes with horrible grammar but you do them anyway ‘cause, hey! Somedays you just want to know ‘What Kind of Seaweed You Were in a Past Life’ or something? I’m the same. I use Facebook a lot. I message people at least ten times a day, I check my friend requests fairly often in case that cute boy I’ve had my eye on added me, and I’ve spent enough time on there to develop an irrational and unrelenting hatred for ‘Pokes’. There’s no point to them! Either you ignore it and risk seeming like a jerk, or; you poke them back, which means they’ll poke you back. Before you know it, the two of you have been launched into some sort of eternal poking match with no end in sight! ...Hi, my name is Hannah, and I am a Facebook addict. But these days, who isn’t one? It’s such a social staple that people don’t even question that you are involved with it one way or another. Either you have a Facebook account, or it’s assumed that you live under a rock in the middle of nowhere. Even though I use Facebook very frequently, there are certain things about the site that drive me bonkers. I’m here to explain why Facebook’s ‘all-in-one’ approach to social media is unimaginative and poses a serious security concern for its users. I’ll do so by using statistics to give a better glimpse into how popular and widespread Facebook’s network is, describing Myers 2 Facebook’s new features and their uncanny similarities to other applications, and finally; by explaining hacking concerns and Facebook’s lackluster security features that really don’t help the issue. How popular is Facebook, exactly? According to Facebook’s official company website since September 2014, the network has an average of 864 Million users a day, about 703 Million [81%] of those daily users access Facebook via mobile devices. Monthly, Facebook garners a mind-blowing 1.35 Billion users, approximately. An estimation of 1.12 Billion [83%] of those users once again, accessing Facebook on their mobile devices. (Newsroom.fb.com/companyinfo/ 2014) In an article written by the New York Times, Facebook claims their users spend approximately 500 Billion minutes on the site each month (Bilton 2010). Allow me to be blunt and say; “Holy shit, that’s a lot.” Now, let’s widen the spectrum just a tad more. As far as the vast population of users is concerned [1.35 Billion people or so], as Canadians, we barely scratch the surface. 82.2% of users are located outside of Canada and the United States (Bilton 2010). That’s approximately 1.11 Billion people that aren’t even in the same country as us! Yikes. No wonder Facebook is one of the largest social networks in the world. It’s enormous, and it’s expanding every day! Ideas are circulating constantly, ways to make the network even better and more enthralling to its users. However, many ideas fall quite a ways from being original. On April 17th, Facebook launched a new features called “Nearby Friends”, which “helps you discover which friends are nearby or on the go” (Newsroom.fb.com/company-info 2014) by tracking your location services and sending a notification to your mobile device so you can meet up. NF is an optional feature, and location sharing goes both ways. Friends will only be able to see that you’re nearby if you share this info with them, and vice versa. You can also see when friends are traveling and where they’re going so you can suggest places to visit while they enjoy Myers 3 their stay! Sounds nice, right? Here’s the problem: who’s ever hung out specifically with someone in order to avoid someone else? Now, what if said person saw that the two of you were nearby and decided to invite themselves to your little ‘private hangout’? The awkward social implications are almost too painful to imagine. Now, meet my little cousins Sydney and Jade; sweet, young, and yes, they’re as cute as they are gullible. For Pete’s sakes, they still think ‘Troll Faces’ are funny. Anyway, the two of them were blessed with technology and financially stable parents, so naturally they have iPads and iPhones to call their own. It was only a matter of time before Facebook became part of their lives, which irks me because they’re like, 12, but what can I do? It’s not too hard to imagine a stranger befriending one of them on Facebook, pretending to be a family friend or relative and convincing them to share locations if they need to ‘drop something off for their parents’ or just ‘visit’. If the exchange is successful, then NF can literally lead that stranger right to their front door. I can’t say I’m particularly a fan of that scenario. Even if there was an age restriction to the feature, I’m sure we all know very well that it doesn’t take a genius to click ‘Yes, I am 18 or over.’ Back to the feature [Great Scott, Marty!] of Nearby Friends, the premise sounds quite familiar. An app that shows people’s locations and allows you to recommend others? It’s a nifty idea, but it’s too bad “Foursquare” beat them to the punch 5 years earlier (Foursquare.com/about 2014). What about the socializing aspect of it? Considering the demographic I’m speaking to, “Tinder” should sound pretty familiar. Tinder, the hot new way to meet and greet people, was released September 15th, 2012; about a year and a half before their Facebook counterpart (gotinder.com/about). Okay, maybe I’m being a little harsh. After all, how many bandwagons could Facebook possibly jump on? ...More than you’d think. “Facebook Video”, which is exactly what it sounds like, was released 8 months after “Vine” (Blog.vine.co/archive 2014). Facebook’s “Slingshot”, a clever way to send and receive captioned Myers 4 photos, was about 3 years too late; the popular app “Snapchat” already having effectively executed that premise (Blog.snapchat.com 2014). Facebook released “Paper” just this last January, a way to keep track of articles, recipes, pictures, pretty much anything you’d like in one convenient place. Under four years before, “Pinterest” had made its debut, eclipsing Facebook’s attempt by a long shot (About.pinterest.com/en-gb 2014). Last, but certainly not least, Facebook decided to incorporate the use of hashtags [#]; means to assign a topic to a status, which readers can click on to view similar statuses or articles posted about said topic. Facebook calls it “Embedded Posts”, the idea blatantly taken from “Twitter”, who had been using hashtags for 7 years before Facebook decided to adopt it for their own purposes (About.twitter.com 2014). There is no concrete proof out there that Facebook maliciously ripped off other networking companies, but after coming across a considerable amount of strangely identical ideas one after the other, I think the topic is not unreasonable to speculate upon. I can hear you already; “It’s handy having all the apps in one place. Why bother wasting valuable storage space with several other apps?” Let me respond to that with an analogy. You have a nice blue basket, which resembles Facebook, and several cute little eggs inside which resemble your apps or features, and the information you have stored on them. What happens if you get a hole in it; if someone manages to hack your Facebook account? You lose everything! All your info and your means of accessing social media is known to someone other than yourself. That could be severely damaging. You can try to adjust your settings in order to reduce any collateral damage, but Nick Bilton of the New York Times has a few things to say about that in his article “Price of Facebook Privacy? Start Clicking.” “Which is longer, the United States Constitution or Facebook’s Privacy Policy (Bilton 2010)?” The article begins, the answer being the latter. Bilton reveals the alarming fact that Facebook is sharing the personal data of its users Myers 5 with “third-party Web sites (Bilton 2010)”, as it is now optional for information to be private, making said information public by default until we change it ourselves. He then goes on to describe Facebook’s labyrinth of a Privacy Policy, noting that “to opt out of full disclosure of most information, it is necessary to click through more than 50 privacy buttons, which then require choosing among a total of more than 170 options (Bilton 2010).” Who has the time to go through that mess? I know I don’t! The common assumption is that, since it is a difficult process, many people just don’t bother with securing their account properly. I know I, for one, was comfortable in my own ignorance for a while, then my friend Jacqueline told me a little story. Jacqueline Arthur is one of the most straight-laced people I know, and I love her for it. It took forever for myself and some of her friends to convince her to join Facebook so she could be more social, and eventually she begrudgingly agreed. She had a fairly minimalist Facebook page, maybe posting the occasional picture of herself at Concerto competitions, but nothing too extravagant. Then, one day, she logged into her account, immediately noting something was amiss. Instead of her profile picture looking back at her, she saw a pornographic picture of a woman displayed for all to see, among other less than savoury things. Within a week, her account was shut down for indecent content. After that fiasco, she quit Facebook entirely, never bothering to try again with a different account. If someone like Jacqueline could be a victim of hacking, of all people, it can happen to anyone. In fact, there are websites dedicated solely to hacking Facebook accounts. “www.fb-hacker.net” is one of presumably many, and invading someone’s privacy is as easy as 1-2-3. There is no installation required. All you need to do is copy and paste the URL [http://www.blahblahblah.com] of the victim’s profile page and click on “start hacking” at the bottom of the page. I’m not kidding. There’s actually a big, stupid blue button that intentionally makes privacy invasion convenient for creeps everywhere. It’s gross. Myers 6 This site is rated 9.8/10 by users and is also self-proclaimed to be the number one site for unearthing Facebook passwords, completing hundreds of requests daily with a 98% effectiveness rate (Fb-hacker.net 2014). Their method is deemed “secure” and only takes, on occasion, a few minutes to complete. Did I mention that the service is completely free? That basket is looking mighty fragile, isn’t it? Let’s recap for a second: we’ve discussed just how vast Facebook’s network really is, pointed out the clear redundancies in Facebook’s “all-in-one” strategy, and the security problems that can arise from said strategy. What do I want you to do about it? I’m not asking you to cut Facebook out of your life, right now. I couldn’t do that, not with the number of people I have to keep in contact with! I can only assume the rest of you feel the same. All I’m asking is... please don’t be stupid. Don’t post idiotic things online that might bite you in the ass in the foreseeable future. Limit the amount of information that could potentially be leaked about you. Don’t post absolutely everything about your life. Just don’t. Even if you go through the 50-170+ privacy options in your settings, there’s still no guarantee that you’ll know exactly whom is looking at your page. A potential employer, a scholarship donor, ...your mom... Chances are, none of them would be too pleased to see how big your morning ‘deuce’ is, that shoddily filmed cellphone video of you doing a kegstand at some party, the misspelled tattoo you got when you were plastered [probably after that kegstand] or, most importantly, the kind of friends you have that would find those posts appealing. The internet is not a private place. That’s the point. It’s a way for information to be equally and freely sent and received from all over the world. The world is growing more public by the day, even more so now than ever with all these networking sites at our disposal. It is absolutely crucial to understand that, so, please always consider your known and unknown audience before you decide to update that status of yours. Myers 7 Works Cited Bilton, Nick. “Price of Facebook Privacy? Start Clicking.” Nytimes.com. The New York Times Company. 2010. Web. 20 Nov. 2014. “Facebook.” newsroom.fb.com/company-info/. WordPress.com VIP. 30 Sept. 2014. Web. 20 Nov. 2014. “Foursquare.” foursquare.ca/about. Union Square Ventures. 2014. Web. 20 Nov. 2014. “Pinterest.” about.pinterest.com/en-gb. Pinterest Inc. 2014. Web. 20 Nov. 2014. “Snapchat.” blog.snapchat.com. Snapchat Inc. 2014. Web. 20 Nov 2014. “Tinder.” gotinder.com/about. Tinder Inc. 2014. Web. 20 Nov. 2014. “Twitter.” about.twitter.com. Twitter Inc. 2014. Web. 20 Nov. 2014. “Vine.” blog.vine.co/archive. Vine Inc. 2014. Web. 20 Nov. 2014.