2. Solution for Privacy Setting in SNSs
2.1 The Problem
As early as 2003, Liben-Nowell & Kleinberg (2003) have pointed out that 36% of the contents of those users are shared with Facebook’s default privacy setting. And it is almost always that the users believe that they share fewer contents in FB than they actually do. As Liu et. al. (2011) also found that there exists a discrepancy between what users expect for their information privacy and what the Social Networking system provides to them. Although privacy settings do exist in Social Networking Services, studies have shown that users still think that they are sharing less information than they actually are on the Internet. This could happen due to three reasons:
a) Users are not aware of …show more content…
For this reason, as many Social Networking Services still use the more public sharing possible as the default privacy setting, we suggest that the default setting should always be the moderate choice, means that it is neither too public nor too private. For example, Facebook uses “Public”, “Friends”, and “Only me”, as three basic levels of privacy setting. According to Facebook, “Public” means if a user chooses this option, then any one on or off Facebook can see his/her post; “Friends” refers to only a user’s friends on Facebook can see his/her sharing; “Only me” states that only the user himself/herself can see the information; It also includes other options such as all people from your school, or users can choose in particular who they want to share the information with. In default, Facebook set “Public” for the user, which means if a user upload something but do nothing about the privacy setting, he/she is always sharing with the all people around the world with Internet connection. This could have some potential privacy issues, especially when users think that they are sharing their information with only their friends not the public. So in Facebook’s case, our suggestion is make the default “Friends” instead of “Public”. We did not go to the most restricted level for default setting, --in the Facebook case, the …show more content…
Also, as we keep both the obscure level of limitation as well as the complete SNS friends list in one pop-up window, the selection need to stay synchronized. For example, if a user selected “Colleagues” at the top, all of his/her colleagues will also be selected in the friend list at the bottom. Furthermore, users’ friends list should be color-coded based on different categories of the obscure levels, in order to show the relationship and connection between the obscure levels and the complete friends list (see figure 5a & figure
2.1 The Problem
As early as 2003, Liben-Nowell & Kleinberg (2003) have pointed out that 36% of the contents of those users are shared with Facebook’s default privacy setting. And it is almost always that the users believe that they share fewer contents in FB than they actually do. As Liu et. al. (2011) also found that there exists a discrepancy between what users expect for their information privacy and what the Social Networking system provides to them. Although privacy settings do exist in Social Networking Services, studies have shown that users still think that they are sharing less information than they actually are on the Internet. This could happen due to three reasons:
a) Users are not aware of …show more content…
For this reason, as many Social Networking Services still use the more public sharing possible as the default privacy setting, we suggest that the default setting should always be the moderate choice, means that it is neither too public nor too private. For example, Facebook uses “Public”, “Friends”, and “Only me”, as three basic levels of privacy setting. According to Facebook, “Public” means if a user chooses this option, then any one on or off Facebook can see his/her post; “Friends” refers to only a user’s friends on Facebook can see his/her sharing; “Only me” states that only the user himself/herself can see the information; It also includes other options such as all people from your school, or users can choose in particular who they want to share the information with. In default, Facebook set “Public” for the user, which means if a user upload something but do nothing about the privacy setting, he/she is always sharing with the all people around the world with Internet connection. This could have some potential privacy issues, especially when users think that they are sharing their information with only their friends not the public. So in Facebook’s case, our suggestion is make the default “Friends” instead of “Public”. We did not go to the most restricted level for default setting, --in the Facebook case, the …show more content…
Also, as we keep both the obscure level of limitation as well as the complete SNS friends list in one pop-up window, the selection need to stay synchronized. For example, if a user selected “Colleagues” at the top, all of his/her colleagues will also be selected in the friend list at the bottom. Furthermore, users’ friends list should be color-coded based on different categories of the obscure levels, in order to show the relationship and connection between the obscure levels and the complete friends list (see figure 5a & figure