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Public awareness i.e. Spanish Government released an awareness campaign
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Difficulty to understand SNS policies, terms and conditions
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Technical understanding of how to amend settings
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Default Settings (Opt-in / Opt-out)
User attitudes were unconvinced that the privacy policies are easy to understand on SNS, whereas, the qualitative data on behalf of the corporations identified the need for SNS to be more user friendly. Susan Pointer (2010) suggests that privacy comes down to choice, transparency and control. However, although Facebook introduced new ‘tools’ research suggested they actually did not give the user control over their own information. This was due to a lack of information on part of Facebook, when changes took place and how to understand and use the tools. The Research illustrated that users should have the choice to ‘opt-in’ instead of settings being set on default for users having to choose ‘opt-out’, when it comes to releasing information to third party companies. Research illustrated how a significant amount of respondents were not happy for their information to be given to third parties, and the lack of awareness to use privacy controls means this can go unnoticed. Consequently, users should have the right to ‘opt-in’ to being traced and tracked through the use of ‘cookies’. Recommendations to how Facebook can strike a balance between their revenue and the user experience: -
Facebook’s use of user content has to have clear limits.
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The User should be able to ‘opt-in’ their privacy settings to their information being used for commercial purposes or third parties.
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The user should be informed what third parties their content is sent to.
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User policies and license should be easy to understand, like the use of content.
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UGC should expire when the user deletes it, or closes their account.
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Facebook should be ‘opt-in’ only so that they can’t change the terms (like the privacy settings) whenever they want.