Facebook security is just a hog-wash: Indian Techies
By Juby Thomas   |   Thursday, 03 June 2010, 17:27 IST   |    13 Comments
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Facebook security is just a hog-wash: Indian Techies
Bangalore: Networking is a way to develop relationships that help you gain insight into an industry, a company, or a career path. 65 to 85 percent of jobs are found through networking. 90 percent of the Indian workforce agrees to the fact that social networking sites play a vital role in their career development. But the recent issues on Facebook securities have shaken the mindset of Indian techies. A recent online survey shows that around 16 percent of the Fcebook users claiming to have already stopped using Facebook as a result of inadequate control over their data. Almost two thirds of Facebook users are considering leaving due to the same reason. "Facebook make it difficult for the average user to understand or manage this. I don't think it has much respect for you or your data, especially in the context of the future. My main concern about Facebook is that it shares data in ways users don't reasonably expect. And I think majority of the techies feel the same," says Sumesh Software Engineer from a U.S. based financial firm. Even though, Facebook have admitted recently that it had made mistakes in its privacy policies and promised to roll out new tools that would make it easier for its 400 million users to control their personal data. It is unclear as to whether any changes will be substantial enough to address user concerns. But majority of the techies feel that the privacy issues started way back in 2007 and whenever news comes up it used to add new updates to its settings and get rid of it. Muthu, Principal Engineer at Yahoo says "Comparatively the privacy settings in Facebook are really confusing and one point of time people won't read all of them and we may miss privacy." Majority of the Indian mindset are scared to fill up questions in privacy settings since they are very personal and this leads to another issue of privacy. Facebook will need to make sure further changes to the privacy policy are clear, concise and in the interest of making it easier for members to know exactly who has access to whatever they chose to upload. Vishnu a software Engineer from Infosys said "Most still don't know how to set their Facebook privacy options safely, similar questions are asked in different ways and it is really confusing. As advanced communication devices and new sites are being launched, the youth is sharing more stuff online, and there should be enough privacy or else this might lead into greater problems." The survey showing that only 24 percent of users aren't thinking about quitting due to privacy .But even they raise issues with Facebook. Nishikant Pushkar Software Engineer from Accenture said, "It is really disappointing to see the suspicious links which you click get published on friend's wall without your knowledge." The techies suggest that there is a common feeling of insecurity about whether the private information and pictures are being shared without knowledge. Therefore social networking sites should decide upon on what is good for their users and their mindset needs to be changed. There are plenty of famous examples of compromises due to weak security features, such as the hacking of Sarah Palin's or Salma Hayek's e-mail. You can suffer from the same problem if someone close to you wants to compromise your account. Majority prefer to quite as a precaution since the privacy issue is a symptom of a larger set of issues. "Actually it's hard to change your habits. Majority of people find it difficult to quit since it was really engaging and entertaining. But now these privacy issues demands us to quit," techies added.

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