Chris Soghoian writes in an online article about the state of Facebook pretending to have a grip on which data is being used and saved by the companies that run applications:

„ As a PhD student in Information Security, I can quite confidently say that from a technical perspective, this is impossible. Simply put, once the data leaves Facebook's servers, the company has no way of knowing what happens to it.“ (Soghoian 2008)

The applications we use on Facebook are not the only security issue that makes our online identity become very see through. No, in fact our own urge to profile ourselves, our lives on the web, makes the Facebook user the perfect target for internet-advertisers. By means of having access to our tastes of music, our political views, our hobbies, but also basic information like our age, our gender, our home country are a new means of targeting advertising and spam at internet users, tailored to their individual identities and desires.

Another initial problem with Facebook was, when Facebook went online with their newsfeed stories. The newsfeed publishes anything that a friend in the network changes about his or her profile, but also personal details that are changed like relationship status or hometown. This was one of the first occasions for Facebook users to join groups that were arguing for an opt-in version of this Facebook tool. By now, vigilant and informed users have the option of controlling what goes into their newsfeeds and which friends are allowed to see which news. However it is an issue that Facebook does not place great emphasis on spreading information about. Additionally the access to our information has by now been taken by the applications we use.

People signing up for networking platforms like My Space or Facebook, have to be aware of the fact that the information we publish online can be accessed and read by almost anyone, if we don’t put restrictive measurements in place. It is common practice for employers by now, to check up on interviewees’ online identities, to get a first impression on their personality. This should give us as internet users as sense of how sensitive the issue of data privacy is.

Another application that was initially put in as a permanent and compulsory feature was Beacon, Betsy Schiffman writes in her Wired Blog article:

„...Facebook, which is still making amends with the public for its controversial ad platform called Beacon. The platform launched last month and immediately earned the ire of users because of a fairly objectionable feature: When Facebook members shopped on advertisers' external sites, their friends were automatically notified of their purchases, often before they knew that the notifications were sent out. After fierce public outcry, Facebook modified the system last week so users now have to click "OK" before a notification is sent out to friends about a transaction.“ (Schiffmann 2004)

This process of digital surveillance of consuming patterns, is a very sophisticated way of making advertising revenue for websites. Being able to offer the advertisers extremely targeted advertising space

s, being able to speak to the individual consumer is a great assett for a networking website. Especially in the age of the „long tail“. Just a quick explanation:

The long tail, is what happened to consuming patterns in the age of the internet. Since the internet manages to offer everything for everyone, without having to use storage space, it enables products, that usually wouldn’t have paid off to sell in store, to sell. This selling curve, that seems never to reach the point of zero, is called the long tail.

It could be argued that by only using our credit card, we already give away exactly as much information about ourselves, but I would say that Facebook ma

nages to target consumers in a much more private and specified way.

In order to collect data from external sites, Facebook gives Beacon advertisers a piece of code that they run on specific web pages (such as order confirmations). The code is used to transmit data between the advertisers' sites and Facebook's servers. If a user clicks on the "Remember Me" box when logging in to Facebook, the cookies that are stored locally on his computer will also store data about his activities on Beacon advertisers' sites.

(Schiffmann 2004)

So what we deal with here is complete and utter surveillance of our everyday lives.

Here, drawing the comparison with My Space seems inevitable. Even though My Space was originally the more popular site, it quickly lost out to the clear and easy to handle design of Facebook.

But what upset My Space users most and was surely a reason for a wave of profile deletions was that it was less secure. Hackers had placed links to Login-pages all over My Space,that looked like the My Space Login Page, here there were many users giving their passwords and usernames, as well as e-mail addresses away to spammers and hackers.

These Spammers and Hackers would use the information given to them, to post a ridiculous amount of adverts and sleazy content all over the profile pages of the hacked person’s friends.

This was the point when My Space installed the feature „approve comment“, before users had to be really quick with deleting things from their page, that they didn’t want to be there.