Privacy and Facebook, IGF style

My esteemed colleague Ian Brown of the OII has been off presenting our joint research on privacy and saocial networking sites at the IGF in Egypt (lucky dog!)

The updated powerpoint can be found here.

Death, assets and virtual worlds

I'm briefly quoted in this timely article in the New York Times on virtual assets and what to do with them after death.

Death and Facebook

Ok back to business as usual..

Pangloss is always pleased to see things she's been lecturing about for a year turn into reality, and here comes one again. Facebook have decided to formalise the procedures they already, to some extent had, for "memorialising" the profiles of users who have become deceased. The Grauniad reports:

"When someone leaves us, they don't leave our memories or our social network. To reflect that reality, we created the idea of 'memorialised' profiles as a place where people can save and share their memories of those who've passed," explained Max Kelly, Facebook head of security, on the company's blog.

But what does it mean, that an account gets "memorialised"? The contact information and status updates are removed, and the profile is set private. No one can log into it any more. Only Facebook friends can locate the profile via search and leave posts on the wall for remembrance."

Although neither the Guardian nor Facebook mention it, it seems likely this too is a response to the recent demand by the Canadian Privacy Commissioner that FB put their house in order. But is this really the best option, or the only alternative (as it has been presented) to deletion by default?

As Pangloss has suggested before, is it not really up to the user themselves if they wish to see their site "memorialised", or if they feel this might be mawkish and upsetting? Would it not be better and indeed simpler for FB to provide a preference switch for the user to say in advance what they want, rather than relying on the impetus of the family to make a choice on death? And what if the user leaves a wish in their will which conflicts with what the family say to FB - will anyone have an interest to intervene?

Another problem, which the Guardian has also spotted, is that FB has simultaneously rolled out a "Reconnect" feature which encourages users to get back in touch with friends they've lost touch with. From FB's company blog, one user comment exposes the problem:

"hey i don't know if you read all of these, but facebook has suggested that i "reconnect" with two friends in the last two days, both of whom died over 18 months ago. please, please, please stop this as it is disturbing and creepy."

Er, yes. Oops?

Pangloss wonders bye the bye if is coincidental these changes have been made fairly shortly after the Jewish New Year and the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur) when one remembers the dead and gone .. a connection recently made by Jewish Week who interviewed Pangloss a month back on this exact matter. The idea floated there that eulogy posts on FB memorialised profiles are a sort of collective post death mourning in these godless times, is an interesting and slightly scarey one. How long before FB goes 3D and starts offering an optional virtual funeral with avatars of deceased and friends? (And what adverts would they sell alongside??)

Pangloss herself is laid up right now with a bad back, by the way, and definitely feels after all this like she has one foot in the web 2.0 grave..

Canada Forces Facebook to make Privacy Changes

(via Ian Brown)

In a remarkable turn of events, Facebook has agreed to add significant new privacy safeguards and make other changes in response to the Privacy Commissioner of Canada’s recent investigation into the popular social networking site’s privacy policies and practices.

"The following is an overview of key issues raised during the investigation and Facebook’s response:

1. Third-party Application Developers

Issue: The sharing of personal information with third-party developers creating Facebook applications such as games and quizzes raises serious privacy risks. With more than one million developers around the globe, the Commissioner is concerned about a lack of adequate safeguards to effectively restrict those developers from accessing users’ personal information, along with information about their online “friends.”

Response: Facebook has agreed to retrofit its application platform in a way that will prevent any application from accessing information until it obtains express consent for each category of personal information it wishes to access. Under this new permissions model, users adding an application will be advised that the application wants access to specific categories of information. The user will be able to control which categories of information an application is permitted to access. There will also be a link to a statement by the developer to explain how it will use the data.

This change will require significant technological changes. Developers using the platform will also need to adapt their applications and Facebook expects the entire process to take one year to implement.

2. Deactivation of Accounts

Issue: Facebook provides confusing information about the distinction between account deactivation – whereby personal information is held in digital storage – and deletion – whereby personal information is actually erased from Facebook servers. As well, Facebook should implement a retention policy under which the personal information of users who have deactivated their accounts will be deleted from the site’s servers after a reasonable length of time.

Response: Facebook has agreed to make it clear to users that they have the option of either deactivating their account or deleting their account. This distinction will be explained in Facebook’s privacy policy and users will receive a notice about the delete option during the deactivation process.

While we asked for a retention policy, we looked at the issue again and considered what Facebook was proposing. We determined the company’s approach – providing clarity about the options, offering a clear choice, and alleviating the confusion – is acceptable because it will allow users to make informed decisions about how their personal information is to be handled.

....

4. Accounts of Deceased Users

Issue: People should have a better way to provide meaningful consent to have their account “memorialized” after their death. As such, Facebook should be clear in its privacy policy that it will keep a user’s profile online after death so that friends can post comments and pay tribute.

Response: Facebook agreed to change the wording in its privacy policy to explain what will happen in the event of a user’s death."

Pangloss is mildly amused that only two years after she, Ian Brown and Chris Marsden presented a paper highlighting the privacy and security issues around the use of third party apps on Facebook, changes are finally being made.

The interesting issue will be if these changes are only made for Facebook in Canada or applied worldwide; similar legal pressure has not, it seems, being exerted in other jurisdictions such as the UK and the US - but there has certainly been concern over the repeated use of third party apps as an easy way to collect personal data for fraudulent or criminal purposes, or to spread malware. One might speculate that if FB are investing in developing new more privacy-compliant code it might as well install it system-wide given the PR advantages and the fact that FB's growth appears to have peaked (the rate of growth has been declining since about January 08). Chris Soghoian on Twitter seems to indicate the changes will be worldwide. If so, the Canadians have certainly done us all a favour.

Pangloss is also intrigued by the Canadian concern over Facebook's treatment of profiles on death. While the matter is certainly a pressing one (with 200 million users, not all young, FB profiles are, sadly, often a major concern to relatives after death) in fact FB has been pretty much in the vanguard in the area of transmision of digital assets, in at least providing a clear and accessible way for relatives to ask for profiles to be "memorialised" after death.

Other sites where digital "assets" remain after death (eg eBay, Flickr, et al) are in general much less clear about what rights they offer relativesafter death, have hard to penetrate procedures on the matter, or actively refuse to allow relatives control after death (see the famous Yahoo! case where relatives of a US marine were initially refused access to his emails after death because the privacy policy forbade passing on information to any third party. At least in the US, the privacy policy remains unchanged to date.)

However in my recent talk on this subject, I also suggested that it would be easy for FB in its various preference suggestions to allow users themselves to indicate what they would like done with their profiles after death. Not all want their profiles left open for comments after death ; some would like them closed down; others might like a friend or relatives to make the decision what to do. One size does not fit all and a solution should also consider and balance the interests of both the profile owner and the relatives. However if FB take a lead here under Canadian persuasion, they may well benefit all by becoming a good practice example in a rather under-considered part of the web 2.0 field.

Death 2.0

Thomas Crampton, an Asia-based journalist and blogger, has posted a video he made after I gave a paper in Hong Kong in June 2009 at Peter Yu's Digital Converges Conference, on succession to digital assets , including social network profiles and emails etc, here.



There's also a write up to go with it here.

I'll be giving an updated version of this at GiKii in Amsterdam in September :-)