Pervasive Facebook triggers privacy fears

Already a looming presence online, the Facebook networking site is stirring controversy with new features that reveal the personal tastes and habits of subscribers.

Personal privacy fears about Facebook voiced by consumer watchdogs in the US are now being shared by users all over the world.

The social networking giant Facebook is facing growing flak for introducing new features to its services this month that many see as an invasion of users' privacy.

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US civil liberties groups are demanding that the Federal Trade Commission investigate Facebook, alleging that it has been secretly tracking users even after they log off from its website. The American Civil Liberties Union, Consumer Action, the American Library Association, the Electronic Private Information Centerand the Center for Digital Democracy have joined forces to stop Facebook assembling ever-greater volumes of data concerning its users' habits and tastes with the intention of profiting from them.

Facebook is available in more than 70 languages and has 800 million users, and the privacy fears voiced by consumer watchdogs in the US are now being shared by users all over the world. Internet-savvy countries such as the UAE are particularly at risk. According to research on UAE internet usage carried out by the jobsite Bayt.com and the research company YouGovSiraj, 90 per cent of respondents use Facebook; 16 per cent say they are constantly connected to the website.

New features now being rolled out by Facebook such as Timeline give it the power automatically to share information whenever a user reads an article, listens to a song or watches TV.

"The new Facebook Timeline presents a scrapbook of everything you have done on the website," says Graham Cluley, an analyst at Sophos, the computer security specialist. "This means, for instance, that listening to music via Spotify will instantly update your friends about what you are listening to. And this information is relayed to your Facebook friends via the newsfeed ticker.

"At the moment, Facebook's Timeline feature is in beta. They haven't rolled it out to all users yet, but they are expected to do so very soon."

According to its critics, Facebook is not carrying out these far-reaching changes to its services for subscribers but for partners such as the digital music service Spotify. These partners receive added publicity each time a user's Facebook page is updated.

"Facebook is collating all this information not for their users' benefit but in order to monetise their vast sea of data of individual customers' information through advertising and partnership deals with other organisations," Mr Cluley says.

While Facebook insists that users share this information voluntarily, industry watchers are sceptical about how this works in practice.

"Quite frankly, Facebook is taking a liberty," Mr Cluley says. "Although it is possible to disable some Facebook features like these, most people do not, although they might not welcome anyone being able to see which websites they are visiting.

"In the case of The Wall Street Journal and some other online newspapers, Facebook will also inform visitors to its site which articles someone is reading or has read."

Although Facebook's new software works only when someone is logged on to its site, many users never bother to log off Facebook when they are online. The ability to access Facebook via mobile phones is also leading to a situation in which a growing number of people never log off from the site.

While Facebook's users still have a choice as to whether to share their lives with strangers via a social networking website, this could soon change. There are growing fears that so prevalent is the use of Facebook and other social networking websites that there could be far-reaching consequences for any individual who decides to avoid using them altogether.

"Society is rapidly reaching a point where it will be virtually obligatory to have a social networking account with a provider such as Facebook," Mr Cluley says. "Employers will expect staff to monitor their Facebook page in order to keep abreast of information posted by colleagues or clients."

In just the same way that it is now often regarded as dangerously eccentric not to possess a mobile phone or an email account, those who eschew social networking websites altogether may find themselves ostracised.

"In the case of some events, it is impossible to find out basic information or register for attendance unless you enter the relevant site via a Facebook account," Mr Cluley says. "People who choose not to have a social networking account may find themselves unable to keep abreast of events in the workplace.

"It will be increasingly suspect not to have a Facebook account."

And with social networking becoming ever more far-reaching, there are growing fears for the future of personal privacy.

"Some social networks are introducing facial recognition technology, which helps them to build up not only the details of who your friends are, where you work, what you like and dislike - all of which they have already - but also what you look like," Mr Cluley says.

"You can imagine various Big Brothersituations where a database of faces would make people very uncomfortable."