The threats of the popular social network Facebook are:
- Identity theft
- Threats to personal safety such as stalking or threatening either online or in real life
- Social risks through participating in minority groups or stigmatized groups
How do people differ in self-disclosure and what kind or how much of information has a high risk for these treats?
In a recent study the researchers developed a tool to score the information disclosed on Facebook. This instrument can determine in Facebook profiles what personal information is disclosed and what is not. Next this scoring tool for personal information was used to explore means for examining identity threat.
For this they divided the personal information on Facebook in 3 categories: personal identity information (gender, birth day, birth year, email, and picture), sensitive personal information (email, employer, job position, status, mini-feed, regular wall, picture, photo albums, self-selected photos, tagged photos, message, poke, send a gift, and friends viewable) and potentially stigmatizing information (religious view, politival views, birth year, sexual orientation, photos, friends viewable, interests, activities, favorite music, favorite movies, favorite TV shows, favorite books, favorite quotes, about me).
They used a sample of 400 randomly selected, accessible, personal profiles from 8 Canadian Facebook networks.
Overall in all three categories those revealing their relationship status were also those to reveal more personal information.
Those seeking a relationship were at greatest risk of threat, and disclosed the greatest amount of highly sensitive and potentially stigmatizing information
For all three categories as age increases less personal information is disclosed. Older people are more cautious when disclosing personal information. Facebook users who disclosed information about age, gender, relationship status disclosed more information in all three disclosure categories than people who did not disclose this information. Moreover, those who were single also revealed more stigmatizing items. Gender had no influence on these findings. Although women usually disclose more personal information, this difference from men is not present online.
Results from analyzing these data in another complex way also found
that voluntarily providing personal information related to gender, and relationship status was related to greater disclosure of certain topics
Using facebook for finding a new relationship is probably accompanied by a high threat of identity theft and other social risks, so take care.
Nosko, A., Wood, E., & Molema, S. (2009). All about me: Disclosure in online social networking profiles: The case of FACEBOOK Computers in Human Behavior DOI: 10.1016/j.chb.2009.11.012
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Interesting data. It would also be interesting to see a similar analysis of the business networking site, LinkedIn. I wonder how the perception of the dangers of disclosure vary between a more social site and a business networking site.
For me the main danger of facebook is that it provides another way to procrastinate. I know some of my friends are convinced they’re lost a grade boundry through spending too much time on facebook.
I now use a pseudonym on my social networking because I was careless with the info I provided on Facebook. I have deactivated the FB account with my name on it. It seemed innocuous, but was used against me as well as on my girlfriend.
Be careful!
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I love the photograph
[...] múltiples aspectos del uso de Facebook que hay que explorar. Por ejemplo, un review de un artículo sobre los peligros de Facebook, en el que se afirma que quienes corren mas riesgos debido a la información personal revelada en [...]
face book should be banned after the death of that girl who used this social networking site
@Christine- then I suppose we should ban cars because of the number of people who die in auto accidents; ban electricity even- because of the number of people by electrocution every year. And let’s not forget to ban smoking, eating, drinking, swimming….. did I miss anything.
Great article. Sean Thibodeau has another one about the dangers of Facebook on his site at SusPack – Facebook – Veni, Vidi, Vici!
http://suspiciouspackaging.blogspot.com/2010/08/facebook-good-bad-and-ugly.html