According to the European Network and Information Service Agency (ENISA), the popularity of social-networking sites often leads to disclosures that are “not appropriate to a public forum.” In October, ENISA issued a detailed report describing the privacy threats faced by users of social networks and offered several recommendations to minimize the associated risks.
“It’s a thoughtful analysis and chilling critique,” Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, said in an e-mail. “It’s time for both advocates and governments in the EU and U.S. to work together to develop meaningful rules to govern the data collection on these networks.”
Paul Stephens, the director of public policy at the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, agreed that social networks pose a significant privacy problem. “Obviously, the social networking sites are set up for them to make money,” Stephens said by phone. “Their primary interest is going to be making money and not protecting the privacy of individuals who provide information to the sites.”
Old Worries, New Threats
The ENISA report details several well-known privacy threats and describes some chilling new possibilities. Among the more familiar risks are the compilation of digital dossiers by third parties who download profiles from social networks; the compilation of usage data by the social networking sites; possible identity theft through the use of publicly disclosed information; cyberstalking and bullying; and corporate espionage.
But the report also raises the possibility of some startlingly new dangers. For instance, ENISA warned, the photographs that users post of themselves on social networks can be used as a facial-recognition tool to identify an anonymous profile on another site (for instance, a dating site).
Another emerging technology is Content-Based Image Retrieval (CBIR), in which the features of a photo can be used as the basis for other image searches or can even be used to identify where the…