Google Places Facebook as in top 10 searches in Australia

Google trend data suggest that Facebook is the no 4 search query for 2008 in Australia(Google trends, 2009)

As in previous post I have grave concerns for these social network sites like Facebook and it seems that the for the most of us we do not care that they are collecting huge amount of data about us.

Ok so here is how it works.

1. You register with your email address and your real name, location into Facebook registration process
2. You add a Photo of your self
3. You then create a photo album with all your friends faces
4. You invite some personnel friends to join you in face book

This seems harmless but lets think about the six degrees of separation. The six degrees of separation based on Stanley Milgram's "small world study,"say there is only six steps between you and the rest of the world. (Nation Master,2009)

When you consider this then there is only six steps between you and the other 400 million Facebook users.

So how does this work. Well there is already experiments on Facebook testing Mailgram theory. but that is not what I am leading to. But the theory can tell you of the risks relating to social networks. You are only six steps away from the most deviate Internet Facebook user.

Now back to how this works.

On these group photo your friend comes along a views the photo an then tags a person in that photo as been some one they know. This then links them to their profile who then has photos of the friends. Next thing you find that you not anonymous anymore.

Next Problem with Facebook is the data collection. They know you by your Name, your email, your photo's, your friends, the groups you join and the messages you leave when you write on the wall.

So next time you answer the question "What are you doing now?" think about the answer. The whole world will see it. There is a debate now that this could effect your ability to get a job as potential employees can view your profile on Facebook and make decisions based on what your content is.

But more worrying is what they know about you and what will this data be used for now and in the future.

Security is only as good as the key to open it and no body can claim 100% security especially Facebook who's application run on MySQL and PHP that is open source software that any hacker could see the code to.

Secondly although these company have their privacy policy in place and many attempt have been made to the courts to get these company to reveal identities of users and mostly fail there is still the chance that government may change the rules and allow access to this data by the courts or even their agencies.

While you may feel secure now about what you do on Facebook but may come back and haunt you in the future. There is a good case for governments to apply regulation to social network sites that limits the data they can collect on you.

Nation Masters, 2009,Small world phenomenon' viewed 12th January 2009, from http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Small-world-phenomenon