Jul
14
Your Face on Facebook, Google
Filed Under Privacy | By
It seems that with every new twist in technology we lose another assume facet of our privacy. The latest comes from Facebook’s facial recognition software, and Google’s image recognition function as part of their search engine. For the survivor of sexual assault, for the parent trying to protect her- or himself and their children, these new tools may provide offenders and others with a way of locating or identifying people that would prefer that their whereabouts or that of their families remain obscured. There are tactical things a person can do to reduce their profile, but, as with most anything in the Internet Age, it’s best utility is going forward, not what’s already out there.
The Facebook feature is intended to help recognize members from their pictures and suggest to other people that they might know them. The effect of this technology is that a survivor’s face might be presented for ‘friending’ to the very person from whom they are trying to keep away, because many couples share friends on Facebook. Simply blocking the person won’t help, as a perpetrator could use more than one Facebook account and ‘friend’ people friendly with the survivor. Here are a few ways to limit this type of exposure:
- Facebook users should go through their privacy settings and reduce, to the smallest number, the circle of friends that may see anything about the survivor. Any information that’s visible to ‘the Entire network’ is visible to all users. ‘Friends of friends’ is not as snug a circle as one might think; I recommend a ‘Friends only’ approach to sharing any pictures or personal information, including profile information.
- See the table below for detailed privacy settings (as of late June 2011).
- There are mobile applications encouraging users to state where they are, and many of these post, outside of Facebook’s check-in feature. Since phone users must actively download and register these applications, this is not as much a stealthy issue; but sometimes people don’t realize the implications of their actions.
Here are my personal Facebook settings:
| Information | Setting |
| Posts by me | Friends Only |
| Family | Friends Only |
| Relationships | Friends Only |
| Interested in | Friends Only |
| Bio and favorite quotations | Friends Only |
| Website | Friends Only |
| Religious and political views | Friends Only |
| Birthday | Friends Only |
| Places you check in to | Only Me |
| Include me in “People Here Now” after I check in | Unchecked |
| Edit privacy settings for existing photo albums and videos | User should manage this the first time privacy settings are tightened up to ensure that photo albums are only visible to desired individuals or groups. |
| Photos and videos you’re tagged in | Friends Only |
| Permission to comment on your posts | Friends of Friends |
| Suggest photos of me to friends | Disabled |
| Friends can post on my Wall | Enable |
| Can see Wall posts by friends | Friends Only |
| Friends can check me in to Places | Disabled. This setting is important as some friends might not know a survivor is trying to contain their whereabouts or activities. |
| Contact information | |
| Address | Friends Only (I suggest keeping this field blank entirely) |
| IM screen name | Friends Only. (Also suggested blank; if a person wants contact outside Facebook, they should actively provide that information.) |
| <email addresses> | Friends Only. (Again, consider leaving this blank) |
The Google image and sound search feature attacks privacy from the other end. Although it does not use facial recognition (at least, not at this time), it’s an amazing tool for, for example, presenting Google with an image and getting back images from nearby places, or other connections. This means that a family photo taken at a birthday and available on a website can now be ‘mined’ for the location. The audio feature could say, for example, that the sound sample provided is from a certain city, or train station. Again, there are forward-looking things a survivor can do to limit the information available to undesirable persons:
- See the Facebook issue above. Anything publicly available may be mined by Google for image location recognition.
- Flickr, Tumblr and other photo storage and blog sites may contain images or audio a survivor might not want to have available. All three of these have differing capabilities of limiting user access but blogs in particular are intended for public display. For most survivors this might not be an issue, but it’s something worth looking into for survivors who are writing about their recovery.
Controlling one’s privacy on the Internet is an extension of how we teach children to practice safe Internet access: be a little paranoid, a little less trusting. And assume that anything your commit online may appear in the New York Times’ front page.
The above warnings should be taken in context: with the proper level of vigilance Facebook and other social networking tools are important and increasingly integral to our lives. They are worth the effort to secure, and, for survivors, give them a venue to reach out to others, and reclaim their lives.
In late-breaking news, with Google+’s official launch, there’s a whole other set of privacy issues that bear understanding. In a followup piece I’ll compare Google+ and Facebook’s privacy features and issues.
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Thank you so much! I have been trying to tell people about this, but you laid it out in a concise way. I really really appreciate this post. Go TAASA!