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Privacy on social networks

Social networks (socnets for short) are all about connecting with people, from friends to coworkers to that kid from the 3rd grade who always made you laugh. Part of the fun of these sites is that random people you have lost touch with can look you up and send you a message. Most socnets have privacy settings that allow you to control who sees your profile, which prevent that creepy kid from 6th grade from getting to know you better.

So what else is there to know about socnet privacy settings? Well, there’s actually a lot of variation on privacy policies (written and unwritten) from one site to the next. For this post, I’ll focus just on what outsiders can find out about you via a simple search.

Most socnets have default privacy settings that are fairly lenient. Generally if you set up an account and you don’t review those settings, outside users will be able to see your profile – including number of friends, who your friends are, pictures of you, your age, your late-night-ramblings, etc.

However, even if you change your settings to the strictest options possible, chances are someone who knows your email address can easily find out if you belong to a given social network and usually some additional information about you.

One notable exception is Facebook. Facebook users can adjust many dimensions of their privacy settings, including who is allowed to know that you have a profile on their site. You can, for example, say that you only want your current friends, friends of theirs, and people in your networks to be able to see that you have a profile. You can also control whether people searching for you can see your picture or your friends list, among other things.

MySpace users, and most other socnet users, do not currently have the option of making themselves un-findable by someone looking up their e-mail address. However, MySpace and most other socnets allow users to set their profile to “friends only” so only a limited amount of info is available (things like your picture, city, gender and age).

So why should you care if people know how many Care2 friends you have? Or if people know you’re in the Washington, DC Facebook network? The answer may depend on who’s looking. Keep in mind that this information is completely public to strangers, businesses, and, of course, that creepy kid from the 6th grade. Increasingly, this data about you can be compiled in an automatic way. Your comfort level with sharing that information is up to you.