Security, Privacy & Trust
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(courtesy: Aspirelocal.com)

Privacy and security has become a major issue with Social Networking Sites, most notably Facebook has come under fire for gaining it's users trust, and then later changing it's privacy policy and selling users information to marketers. These sites that provide a free service to its users seem to have found a way to make their businesses sustainable (and profitable). Unlike Facebook, Twitter seems to have approached issues of privacy and security in a much more public and "honest" manner, and have enabled users with the ability to discern how they use the service, as well as how the service uses their information. The very nature of Twitter is that of being "public"- thus the onus of what sort of information becomes public is dependent on the user. Users have the opportunity to become either completely private or completely public, with this in mind most users are willing to sacrifice their privacy to use the site.

Unlike Facebook, all content a user publishes still belongs to the user. Although Twitter does retain the right to “collect, transfer, manipulate, store, disclose and make use of information that users disclose”(Twitter.com, 2012). Twitter claims that they do this largely to improve the site as well as the experience of the users and so far this appears to be true for Twitter. “Most of the information users provide us is information you are asking us to make public. This includes not only the messages users Tweet and the metadata provided with Tweets, such as when users Tweeted, but also the lists users create, the people they follow, the Tweets which are marked as favorites or Retweeted, and many other bits of information that result from your use of the Services.” (Twitter.com, 2012), thus, when compared with other free social networking sites, Twitter has managed to retain the trust of their users. Even in numerous legal cases Twitter has built a reputation around protecting it’s users information, insisting that the information does not belong to them and is therefore not theirs to divulge (Kirk, 2012) …The company's terms of service make "absolutely clear" that users own their content (Kirk, 2012)
Twitter warns it’s users that their “public information is broadly and instantly disseminated.” (Twitter.com, 2012)

“When you share information or content like photos, videos, and links via the Services, you should think carefully about what you are making public.” (Twitter.com, 2012)

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Like many websites, Twitter uses "cookie" technology to collect additional website usage data and to improve their Services. A cookie is a small data file that is transferred to your computer's hard disk. According to the Twitter site (2012), they use both session cookies and persistent cookies to better understand how users interact with their services, to monitor aggregate usage of users and web traffic routing on the service, and to customize and improve the Twitter experience. Twitter does provide it's users with information on how to disable these cookies, if their users are concerned about their privacy, but little research has been conducted into how many users go this far to protect their privacy on Twitter.


(courtesy: Youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KgT25MWlEv0)

Twitter and Its terms of service (2012)

According to it’s Terms of Service, Twitter has the right to use the information of it’s users in certain situations and with the following permissions;

User Consent: We may share or disclose your information at your direction, such as when you authorize a third-party web client or application to access your Twitter account.

Service Providers: Twitter engages service providers to perform functions and provide services to us in the United States and abroad. They may share your private personal information with such service providers subject to confidentiality obligations consistent with this Privacy Policy, and on the condition that the third parties use your private personal data only on our behalf and pursuant to our instructions.

Law and Harm: Twitter may preserve or disclose user information if they believe that it is reasonably necessary to comply with a law, regulation or legal request; to protect the safety of any person; to address fraud, security or technical issues; or to protect Twitter's rights or property. However, nothing in this Privacy Policy is intended to limit any legal defenses or objections that users may have to a third party’s, including a government’s, request to disclose a users information.

Business Transfers: User information may be sold or transferred as part of a transaction during bankruptcy, merger, acquisition, reorganization or sale of assets.

Non-Private or Non-Personal Information: Twitter may share or disclose your non-private, aggregated or otherwise non-personal information, such as a public user profile information, public Tweets, the people you follow or that follow you, or the number of users who clicked on a particular link (even if only one did).

Despite the clarity of their terms of service and privacy policy, Twitter has still come under fire from the media; one incident involved Twitter removing a journalists' Twitter profile after he criticised the NBC broadcast of the Olympics and distributed the corporate email of an NBC executive.


(courtesy: Youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkHiUnlkDvE)

Twitter reacted to a complaint made by NBC, and in doing so removed the journalists twitter Profile, for breaking a Twitter rule of "publishing and posting other people's private and confidential information". Critics complained that Twitter overreacted in the profile removal, and made the point that the NBC Exec's email address was not a private one, but a corporate one. Twitter later reinstated the profile (Gillmor, 2012)

Another predominant issue surrounding Twitter that has recently been in the Australian news, is one surrounding "trolls" and "cyberbullying". Initially the issue arose with public figure, Charlotte Dawson, who according to news reports, attempted suicide after being constantly harassed by people on Twitter.


(courtesy: 60 minutes http://video.adelaidenow.com.au/2275336580/Charlotte-Dawsons-Twitter-hell)

The Twitter privacy policy does inform it's user's that there is a possibility of being exposed to "offensive or abusive" material on the site, so when Dawson requested that the cyberbullies Twitter profiles be removed, Twitter did not comply and suggested she block the particular users instead.(Jones and Byrnes, 2012)

Twitter rarely seems to get involved in the actual action that takes place through the service, although they do identify and intercept a lot of spam. When it comes to real Twitter user profiles, Twitter seem to let the Twitter public police the goings on in the "Twittersphere". Twitter's lack of involvement creates a certain atmosphere in which people feel that they can say anything they like to anybody in the entire world, this is simultaneously the best and worst aspect of Twitter- on one hand it fosters the very nature of "community" and "the public soapbox", and on the other hand it also lays the grounds for anonymous bullying and virtual harassment. For Twitter users, it appears the pro's far outweigh the cons.

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