Comparison of Privacy Policies

8/7/2019 Comparison of Privacy Policies

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ICT3006

Profession

alIssues


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ICT3006 - Professional Issues Page 2

Contents1. Introduction - What are social networking sites? ................................................................................. 4

2. Why Privacy policies are more important for social networking sites? ............................................... 6

3. Facebook ............................................................................................................................................... 7

Standards .............................................................................................................................................. 7

Age limit ................................................................................................................................................ 7

Activities allowed .................................................................................................................................. 7

Mandatory information to be supplied for signing up ......................................................................... 7

Transactional Information .................................................................................................................... 7

Information collected when interacting with Facebook ....................................................................... 7

Access Device and Browser Information .............................................................................................. 7

Cookie Information ............................................................................................................................... 8

Information Facebook receive from third parties ................................................................................ 8

Sharing information on Facebook Privacy ......................................................................................... 8

How Facebook uses users information ................................................................................................ 9

How Facebook share information ......................................................................................................... 9

How users can change or remove information................................................................................... 10

4. LinkedIn ............................................................................................................................................... 10

Standards ............................................................................................................................................ 10

Age limit .............................................................................................................................................. 10

Activities allowed ................................................................................................................................ 10

Mandatory information to be supplied for signing up ....................................................................... 10

What LinkedIns Privacy Policy Covers ................................................................................................ 10

Transactional Information .................................................................................................................. 11

Sharing information on LinkedIn Privacy ......................................................................................... 11

How LinkedIn uses users information................................................................................................ 12

How LinkedIn share information ........................................................................................................ 12

How users can change or remove information in LinkedIn ................................................................ 12

05. Myspace ................................................................................................................................................ 13

Website URL ........................................................................................................................................ 13

Age limit .............................................................................................................................................. 13

Personal Identification Information(PII) ............................................................................................. 13


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Changeability of user information ...................................................................................................... 13

Cookies ................................................................................................................................................ 13

Use of user data at MySpace .............................................................................................................. 13

Compliance with local authorities/laws .............................................................................................. 14

06. Twitter ................................................................................................................................................... 14

Age limit .............................................................................................................................................. 14

Activities allowed ................................................................................................................................ 14

Mandatory information to be supplied for signing up ....................................................................... 14

Information collected when interacting with twitter ......................................................................... 14

Access Device and Browser Information ............................................................................................ 14

Cookie Information ............................................................................................................................. 15

Information related to third parties ................................................................................................... 15

Sharing information on Twitter Privacy ........................................................................................... 15

How Twitter uses and shares users information ............................................................................... 16

How users can change or remove information ................................................................................... 16

07. Flicker .................................................................................................................................................... 17

08. Orkut ..................................................................................................................................................... 17

Comparison of Flicker and Orkut ........................................................................................................ 18

Personal information .......................................................................................................................... 18

Uses and Information Sharing ............................................................................................................. 19

09. References ............................................................................................................................................ 19

10. Group Members .................................................................................................................................... 20


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1.Introduction - What are social networking sites?

Social networking sites are websites that allows users to create a public profile in those websites

and share their pictures, videos, interests, information, and meet new friends and communicate withthem via chat and other communication methods. Every member of a social networking site has an own

profile that represents the information and interests of that specific member. Members can search the

other members by using name, email address, country, and other various options.

There are hundreds of social networking websites exist in the world, however, only few of them

are very popular and get the attention of huge number of users. According to Alexa internet

incorporation (http://www.alexa.com) that analyze the website traffic and user activities on the

websites, the most popular social networking site is the Facebook (http://www.facebook.com) that has

the Alexa traffic rank 2 means that accourding to Alexa estimations, facebook is the second most visited

website in the world that only stay behind the Google (http://www.google.com) . Then comes the

Twitter (http://www.twitter.com) as the seconded most popular and social networking and micro

blogging network for its members. It has the Alexa traffic rank 10. Then the third most popular social

networking site is Linkedin (http://www.linkedin.com) which has the Alexa traffic rank 19. The fourth

most popular social networking site is MySpace (http://www.myspace.com) which has the Alexa traffic

rank 62 at the time of writing this document.


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Social networking sites became rapidly very popular during the last few years. There are several

reasons for this rapid popularity.

A social networking site is a platform for various communication tools. They provide text chat,massage sending, image sharing, video sharing, document sharing and other useful ways of

communications.

Members get opportunities to contact and identify lots of other people around the world withsimilar characteristics such as hobbies, interests, objectives, same age group etc. Whereever

you live, with social network, you can find lots of people around the world and communicate

with them more effectively.

Using social networking sites is a cheap method of communication. Almost all popular socialnetworking sites are completely free for the members and so they only want a working internet

connection to log into the website and communicate with other members.

The main method of earning revenue for the social networking sites is the publishing

advertisements from various advertisers on their websites. Although some social networking sites does

not disclose their profits, according to estimations, most of the popular social networking sites earns

billions of dollars in each years by selling advertisements to their advertisers. Most social networking

sites allows their advertisers to choose their audience by considering the age, sex, country and various

other interesting characteristics, so the advertisers can target their most appropriate niche very

effectively.

However, different types of privacy issues have been identified with these social networking

sites so the site owners have defined their unique privacy policies and statements to indicate their

commitment about the privacy of the users of their websites. At the later parts of this document, we are

going to describe important aspects of the privacy for social networking sites and the privacy policies of

different social networking sites and their good and bad effects on their members.


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2.Why Privacy policies are more important for social networkingsites?When we consider about the contents of the general websites, most of the contents are

managed by the site administrators. They are the people who add new information to the site, update

the existing information in the site, and make modifications to the site as required. So the end-user

(member) involvement is very low in determining the site contents. However, the situation is completely

different in social networking sites. In social networking sites site administrators and developers only do

the creation process of the desired function and the end-users and the contents of the site is created by

the members of the sites using various methods such as entering their information and interests,

uploading photos and videos, share their interesting pages and contents at social networking sites and

other various ways of content sharing.

After a registered members have entered his/her information into his/her profile, some of those

information may be available to the people in all around the world depending of that specific users

privacy settings and the global privacy settings of that specific social networking site. Actually, some

information may be hard to hide and in some social networking sites, most of the information of the

user profiles are visible to all others by default and if a specific user want to hide those information

he/she have to manually edit those privacy settings. Sometimes new users may not aware about this

information closure to the public and may not edit modify these default settings, so their information is

available to the lots of bad people such as spammers.

Another more important factor that should be considered very carefully is the using of third

party applications that are associated with these social networking sites. Examples of such applications

are games, quizzes, and other third party modules that can be integrated to the profiles. Most of the

applications needs access to the personal information of that particular user to operate and then they

can collect those information and they can use those information in for illegal or unethical purposes

such as selling those personal information to the some organizations and spammers. Even though social

networking sites cant completely prevent these kind of unethical usages of personal information of

external applications, they can define some rules and regulations to third party applications to reduce

these types of risks.


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3.Facebook

Standards

Compliant with with TRUSTe Program and EU Safe Harbor framework.

Age limit

Age limit for using facebook is 13 years. Facebook does not collect any information from children under

13 years and if they learn that they have done so, they will immediately delete that data from their

databases.

Activities allowed

Update status, upload or take a photo, upload or record a video, share a link, create an event or

a group, make a comment, write something on someones Wall, write a note, or send someone a

message.

Mandatory information to be supplied for signing up

First name, last name, gender, email and birthday.

Transactional Information

Facebook retain the details of transactions or payments that anyone makes on Facebook. If

anyone does not want Facebook to store his/her payment source account number, he/she can remove it

using his/her payments page.

Information collected when interacting with Facebook

Adding connections (including joining a group or adding a friend), creating a photo album,

sending a gift, poking another user, indicating you like a post, attending an event, or connecting with

an application. In some cases you are also taking an action when you provide information or content to

us. For example, if you share a video, in addition to storing the actual content you uploaded, we might

log the fact that you shared it.

Access Device and Browser Information

When anyone accesses Facebook from a computer, mobile phone, or other device, Facebook

may collect information from that device about users browser type, location, and IP address, as well as

the pages he/she visits.


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Cookie Information

Facebook uses "cookies" (small pieces of data we store for an extended period of time on your

computer, mobile phone, or other device) to make Facebook easier to use, to make their advertising

better, and to protect both users and Facebook.

Information Facebook receive from third parties

Facebook PlatformFacebook does not own or operate the applications or websites that users use through

Facebook Platform (such as games and utilities). Whenever users connect with a Platform

application or website, Facebook will receive information from them, including information

about actions users take. In some cases, in order to personalize the process of connecting,

Facebook may receive a limited amount of information even before you connect with the

application or website.

Information from other websites.Facebook may institute programs with advertising partners and other websites in which

they share information with Facebook:

Information from other usersFacebook may collect information about their users from other Facebook users, such as

when tagging in a photo, video, or place, provides friend details, or indicates a relationship with

particular user.

Sharing information on Facebook Privacy

Name and Profile Picture. For easiness, name and profile picture do not have privacy settings.

Contact Information. Control who can contact you on Facebook, and who can see your contact information such as

your email and phone number(s).

Personal Information.


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Your personal information settings control who can see your personal information, such as your

religious and political views, if you choose to add them.

Posts by Me. You can select a privacy setting for every post you make using the publisher on our site. .

Gender and Birth Date. Facebook asks for your date of birth to verify that you are 13 or older, and so that they can

better limit your access to content and advertisements that are not age appropriate.

How Facebook uses users information

To manage the service. To contact users To serve personalized advertising to users To serve social ads To supplement user profiles To make suggestions To help friends find

How Facebook share information

When you make a payment.When you invite a friend to join.When you choose to share your information with marketers. To help your friends find you. To give search engines access to publicly available information. To help improve or promote our service. To provide you with services. To advertise our services. To offer joint services. To respond to legal requests and prevent harm.


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How users can change or remove information

Editing your profile.Delete uploaded contacts.Deactivating or deleting your account. Limitations on removal. Backup copies.Non-user contact information.

4.LinkedIn

Standards

Personal information collected.

Age limit

Age limit for using LinkedIn is 18 years. LinkedIn does not collect any information under 18 years

and if they learn that they have done so, LinkedIns higher age limits than 18 in some states.

Activities allowed

Update status, upload or take a photo, create an event or a group, make a comment, write

something on someones Wall, send someone a message, Extreme Sports, Corporate Events, Gift

Experiences, Gift Vouchers, Experience Days, Driving Experiences, Team Building.


First name, last name, gender, email and birthday. This are main things.

What LinkedIns Privacy Policy Covers

Information collected by LinkedIn.How LinkedIn uses your information. Your information choices. Your obligations as a user. Important information regarding service eligibility and US Department of Commerce Safe

Harbor certification.

Security.How to contact us.


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Transactional Information

Telecommunications, Financial Markets, Payments, Point of Sales, Information Technology and Services.

Sharing information on LinkedIn Privacy

Personal information collected. For easiness, name and profile picture do not have privacy settings.

RegistrationName, email address, Country and password. We changed this section to clarify the data

necessary to create an account on Linked In.

Profile Information.The type of information you can share on LinkedIn.

Contact Information. Control who can contact you on LinkedIn, and who can see your contact information such as

your email and phone number(s).

Customer Service.To provide more information about the function of LinkedIn s customer services team and to

provide a link to the LinkedIn Customer Service website

Personal Information. Your personal information settings control who can see your personal information, such as your

religious and political views, if you choose to add them.

CookiesA cookies is a tiny data.


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Advertising and web Beacons. Posts by Me.

You can select a privacy setting for every post you make using the publisher on our site.

How LinkedIn uses users information

To manage the service. To contact users To serve personalized advertising to users To supplement user profiles To make suggestions To help friends find

How LinkedIn share information

When you make a payment.When you invite a friend to join.When you choose to share your information with marketers. To help your friends find you. To give search engines access to publicly available information. To help improve or promote our service. To provide you with services. To advertise our services. To offer joint services. To respond to legal requests and prevent harm.

How users can change or remove information in LinkedIn

Editing your profile.Delete uploaded contacts.Deactivating or deleting your account. Limitations on removal. Backup copies.Non-user contact information.


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05. Myspace

Website URL

www.myspace.com

Age limit

Age limit for using MySpace is 13 years.

Personal Identification Information(PII)

When MySpace collects PII from users it is because users are voluntarily submitting Registration

PII in order to register as a Member of MySpace. MySpace may also collect PII from you if you choose to

participate in MySpace Services activities like sweepstakes, contests, and surveys, because users want

MySpace to furnish them with products, services, newsletters, or information, or in connection with

content or suggestions users submit to MySpace for review.

In addition, MySpace collects other non-PII including IP address, aggregate user data, and

browser type. This data is used to manage and improve the MySpace Services, track usage, and for

security purposes.

Changeability of user information

MySpace Members can change their Registration PII and Profile Information at any time and can

control how Visitors, other Members and MySpace communicate with them by controlling their account

settings, available within the Edit Profile portion of their MySpace profile.

Cookies

MySpace uses cookies to identify usersInternet browser, store Users preferences, and

determine whether users have installed the enabling software needed to access certain material on the

MySpace Services. Data in cookies may be read to authenticate user sessions or provide services.

Third party advertisements displayed on MySpace Services may also contain cookies set by

Internet advertising companies or advertisers (known as third party cookies). MySpace does not

control these third party cookies and Users of the MySpace Services should check the privacy policy of

the Internet advertising company or advertiser to see whether and how it uses cookies.

Use of user data at MySpace

At the time users provide their PII, MySpace will notify them of their options regarding

MySpaces use of user PII. Except as described in their Privacy Policy, MySpace will not share users PII

with third parties unless they have given MySpace permission to do so.


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Compliance with local authorities/laws

When a Member who is located in the European Union chooses to post Profile Information that

will be publicly disclosed, that Member is responsible for ensuring that such information conforms to all

local data protection laws. MySpace is not responsible under the EU local data protection laws for

Member-posted information.

06. Twitter

Age limit

Services are not available for people under 13 . They does not knownly collect information from

people under 13. If they found any profile created at Twitter is belongs to a person under 13, they takes

steps to remove those information from their databases and terminate that specific account.

Activities allowed

Update status using tweets, upload a photo, upload a video, share a link, follow other people

(profiles), post and receive tweets via text (sms) messages, or send someone a message.


Full nameUsername Password E-mail address

Information collected when interacting with twitter

Member may enter, update, or remove other details other than the above mandatory details

such as short biography, location information and profile picture as desired by them. When a memberwants to post or receive tweets via mobile phones, he or she must provide an appropriate mobile phone

number for delivery of text messages. Twitter also collect and keep the tweets and metadata provided

with those tweets. Twitter keeps the information about people followed by specific person, people who

follow that specific person, and his Retweets. Also Twitter stores the private messages of every user that

are not monitored but can be monitored as required in special cases.

Access Device and Browser Information

When someone accesses Twitter from a computer, mobile phone, or other device Twitter may

collect the following information about that user.

IP (Internet Protocol) address of that specific users device Browser type Referring domain Page visited Searches and keywords


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Cookie Information

Twitter uses both session and persistent "cookies" (small pieces of data that are stored for an

extended period of time on your computer, mobile phone, or other device) to collect additional website

usage data and improve the services of the Twitter with the time. However, cookies are not required to

access the public profile information and search profiles on Twitter. If a user does not like to cookies to

be enabled, he or she can modify the settings of his/her browser disable cookies.

Information related to third parties

External Service providersTwitter gets some services from trusted third party organizations and service providers.

Twitter may share some information from the user profile created at Twitter with these

third party service providers. This sharing is done only if it is essential and only pursuant

to obligations mirroring the protections of the privacy policy

Information from other websitesInformation from other websites and offers may appear at Twitter as advertisements

and other promotion campaigns.

Information from other usersTwitter may collect information about a specific user from other Twitter users, in

situations such as his/her tweets are Retweeted by an another user.

Sharing information on Twitter Privacy

Full Name and Profile Picture. Full Name and the profile picture can be visible by everyone.

E-mail addressE-mail address is not publicly available for other users. However, if you want you can enable the

ability to others find you by your e-mail address. It means if someone knows your e-mail

address, then he or she can check whether you have a profile at Twitter when this option is

enabled.

LocationSpecifying the location is not mandatory. If you enter your location, that it visible by others.

Website or blogYou can specify the URL of your blog or website if you wish even though filling those

information is not mandatory.


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Tweets by MeBy default, all tweets of a member is publicly available to other users. However, if user wants toprotect his/her tweets, then he can enable Protect my tweets option, so his/her tweets will onlybe able to see by the other approved users specified by the author.

Tweet LocationBy default, tweets Location option is disabled. If the user want he/she can enable it, so the others

can see location at which that specific tweets has been made (e.g. at Colombo).

Tweet MediaBy default, a Twitter member will see the photos and videos shared by the people who are

followed by that specific members, however, if he/she enables this information, then he/she will

be able to see the other persons pictures and videos too.

How Twitter uses and shares users information

To manage the service properly To improve the existing services To help your friends to easily find you To contact users when required To serve personalized promotions to members To serve specific information to the members To be used in special law issues and provide actions that are harmful to othersNon-private information will be shared with by third parties To match advertisers to specific users Provide the level of information access level to the search engines

How users can change or remove information

Editing your profile informationDeleting uploaded pictures and videosDeleting tweetsDeactivating the account.


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07. Flicker

Flickr is an image hosting and video hosting website, web services suite, and online

community created by Ludicorp and later acquired by Yahoo!. In addition to being a popular

website for users to share and embed personal photographs, the service is widely used

by bloggers to host images that they embed in blogs and social media.

Flickr offers two types of accounts: Free and Pro. Free account users are allowed to

upload 300 MB of images a month and 2 videos. And Pro accounts allow users to upload an

unlimited number of images and videos every month and receive unlimited bandwidth and

storage.

Flickr's functionality includes RSS and Atom feeds and an API that enables independent

programmers to expand its services. This includes a large number of third-party Greasemonkey scripts which enhance and extend the functionality of the Flickr site. In

2006, Flickr was the second most Greasemonkey-extended site.

Flickr has increasingly been adopted by many web users as their primary photo storage

site, especially members of the blogging community. In addition, it is popular

with Macintosh and Linux users, who are locked out of photo-sharing sites that require

Windows and Internet Explorer.

08. OrkutOrkut is a social networking website that is owned and operated by Google Inc. The

service is designed to help users meet new friends and maintain existing relationships. The

website is named after its creator, Google employee Orkut Bykkkten.

Originally hosted in California, in August 2008 Google announced that Orkut would be fully

managed and operated in Brazil, by Google Brazil, in the city of Belo Horizonte. This was

decided due to the large Brazilian user base and growth of legal issues.

As of February 2011, Alexa traffic ranked Orkut 102nd in the world; the website

currently has more than 100 million active users worldwide. Anyone 18 years old or older can

join Orkut.

An Orkut user can also add videos to their profile from either YouTube or Google

Video with the additional option of creating either restricted or unrestricted polls for polling a

community of users. There is an option to integrate GTalk(An instant messenger from Google)


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with Orkut enabling chatting and file sharing. Currently GTalk has been integrated in Orkut -

users can directly chat from their Orkut page.

Comparison of Flicker and Orkut

As we know Flickr & orkut are the social network sites which run by the yahoo and the

Google search engines. So in yahoo and Google privacy policies they will mainly describe how

they treat privacy of the user when they use flicker and orkut.

In addition to that, there are additional policy statements that describes their privacy

practices that are specific to flicker and orkut. So in this document we are going to give a

comparison regarding those policy statements which are specific to the Flickr and the orkut.

Personal information

The Flickr users do not need to be registered to search or view public photos on Flickr,

but they must be a registered member of Flickr or yahoo to post. But the orkut users need a

Google account to post, view or search any photos on orkut.

As an orkut member, we can create a profile or orkut community that includes personal

information, such as our gender, age, occupation, hobbies, and interests, plus other content,

such as photos. This information may be accessed and viewed by other orkut members, as

determined by your privacy settings. These things are very much similar to the Flickr as well.

There are much more similarities in orkut and Flickr under the information sharing and

user practices.

When the user invites new members into their network or sends messages through theFlickr or orkut, they collect and maintain information associated with those messages,

including email addresses and content.

The both orkut and Flickr websites maintain information associated with the messageswhich are coming from the websites, such as the phone number, the wireless carrier

associated with the phone number, the content of the message, and the date and timeof the transaction.


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Uses and Information Sharing

The Flickr member can choose to make their photos public for anyone to access, restrict

access to a limited number of other Flickr users, or keep those photos private so only the

member can access them. The member can specify whether or not he/she want their photos tobe accessible to the public, accessible to a select few, or private (only you can access them with

their Yahoo! ID and password).

In orkut the users profile information is also displayed according to the preferences

they set in their account. When user sends messages through orkut, their name and email

address will be identified in the message. And use those name and email address to notify the

user to new members, messages, or other information, such as invitations to join friends'

networks, new testimonials or "fan" ratings, and crush notices.

Orkut allows third-party developers to upload applications to the orkut application

directory. The user may choose to use an application by adding it to their profile. If they add an

application to their profile, the application may collect information from their profile or other

information about user activities on orkut, and share that information with others.

There are much more similarities between Flickr and the orkut regarding this Uses and

Information Sharing section.

09. Referenceshttp://info.yahoo.com/privacy/us/yahoo/flickr/details.html

http://www.orkut.com/html/en-US/privacy.orkut.html?rev=6

http://www.facebook.com/policy.php

http://www.linkedin.com/static?key=privacy_policy

http://www.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=misc.privacy

https://www.flickercandles.co.nz/privacy_policy

http://www.orkut.com.br/html/en-US/privacy.orkut.html?rev=6

http://twitter.com/privacy
http://info.yahoo.com/privacy/us/yahoo/flickr/details.htmlhttp://www.orkut.com/html/en-US/privacy.orkut.html?rev=6http://www.orkut.com/html/en-US/privacy.orkut.html?rev=6http://www.orkut.com/html/en-US/privacy.orkut.html?rev=6http://info.yahoo.com/privacy/us/yahoo/flickr/details.html


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10. Group Members

2008/ICT/004 Bandara W.M.S.K. 08020043

2008/ICT/016 Ishara D.G.R. 08020167

2008/ICT/018 Jayalath U.A. 08020183

2008/ICT /029 Karunarathna A.C. 08020299

2008/ICT/055 Roshan M. 08020558

Documents

Comparison of Privacy Policies