New research shows protecting your privacy ranks low on the priorities of some social networking Web sites.
The research, which will be presented at a workshop in London later this month, says Web sites like Facebook, MySpace and the like have an inherent reason to bury some of the privacy settings that they put in place. The more data you share, the more valuable your information becomes, and the more likely it is that new users will be drawn to the sites. That data can be analyzed and used to target advertisers.
Pressure from privacy-rights groups forces these companies to put security measures in play, but it doesn’t force them to put those controls in users’ faces.
The report looks at 45 social networking sites and considers more than 200 privacy-related criteria. They vary in quality of security. Bebo, LinkedIn and GaiaOnline got the best marks; Badoo, MyLife and CouchSurfing got the worst.
The research shows the big-name sites ranked high in the privacy rankings, most likely because they have more money to attack the problem and because there’s more pressure on them to pursue it.
