Social networking is practically unavoidable now. What was once exclusively an endeavor for teenagers and hipsters, social networking has now spread to the masses. Regardless of age and race, the majority of the American population is a member of at least one social network. Facebook has become so commonplace that it is commonly integrated into everyday conversation and mentioned within the dialogue of television shows. One of the main practices on social networks is the posting and sharing of photographs. We all share, comment on, and are entertained by the photos that we post on social networks, but most of us are not aware of the actual privacy policies that these sites adhere to. Here is a breakdown of some of the most popular social-networking sites and their actual privacy policies when it comes to sharing your photographs.
Facebook
Image: Fusible
Last year, The Federal Trade Commission in Washington announced a large settlement with Facebook on the grounds of using, “unfair and deceptive,” practices concerning users’ privacy audits. The order called for Facebook to fully honor when users deem their content private. Prior to the FTC, Facebook had been allowing advertisers to access personal information, such as photographs, unbeknownst to users, and even if the content was put on the “private” setting. Furthermore, Facebook had been allowing outside application developers to access user information even after accounts had been deleted.
Twitter
Image: mediabistro
Similar to Facebook, the FTC went after Twitter after it failed to protect its users’ information. Starting in 2010, Twitter will be barred for the next 20 years from misleading its users about what is protected and private. Previous to the suit, Twitter failed to protect its users from security lapses which left them susceptible to hackers leading to a multitude of photos and “tweets” (text) being leaked.
Instagram
Image: articles.businessinsider.com
Instagram is a one of the most widely used and rapidly expanding photo-sharing networks currently available. What most people don’t know about Instagram is that it has a pretty troubling privacy policy when it comes to handling your posted photos. Instagram has basically outlined that if you choose to upload an image onto its network, they have the right to distribute, reuse, tweak or sell your image and you give up all of the copyrights. This is troubling to both photographers who utilize the site to share images that they have produced with the intent of receiving credit and to users who post photos that are personal and not meant to be shared on a larger sphere.
Google+
Image: socialmediaexplorer.com
In the beginning of this year, Google announced that it would be vastly changing its privacy policy that would encompass all 60 of its web services, including Google+. The new policy allows for the company to share data between all of their services and anyone who is signed in to any of their services, such as, Gmail, Google+, or YouTube, must agree to the policy—there is no opt-out option. Though it is noble that Google was so open about its privacy policy changes, unlike all of its counterparts (i.e. Facebook and Twitter) the change is still potentially detrimental. By integrating your data, Google has the power to access a large amount of your personal information that can be highly invasive and be utilized to accomplish tasks such as determining your current location.
Before using social networking sites to post your personal information, make sure you are fully aware of their privacy policies. Many sites tend to word their privacy policies in such a way so that they may appear to be a certain way but however are not. Make sure to use caution when posting on social networking sites; don’t be paranoid but some discretion may be necessary.
Tags: Facebook, Google, Instagram, photo-sharing, photographers, photographs, photos, social networking, Twitter, upload
