44% Jamia students share their Facebook password: Survey

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A cookie, also known as an HTTP cookie, web cookie, or browser cookie, is a piece of data stored by a website within a browser, and then subsequently sent back to the same website by the browser.

Since this is an infringement of privacy, we asked the students if they are aware of it and its consequences. 75% students were not aware of it and only 22% were aware of it followed by 3% students who had a vague idea about cookies.

We wanted to ask this question to know how private they are and found out that 44% students shared their password with someone very close and 56% do not like the idea of sharing their password.

Intimacy
The study reveals that privacy may be considered conducive to and necessary for intimacy (for, intimacy resides in selectively revealing private information to certain individuals, but not to others), trust may decrease within an online social network.

At the same time, a new form of intimacy becomes widespread: the sharing of personal information with large and potential unknown numbers of friends and strangers altogether. For e.g. many students considered sharing their information important in order to connect with the outside world for making contacts. At the same time few believe that in order to be private they can either customize the visibility of their information or not reveal any personal information on Facebook.

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Few students are aware of tailor made Advertisements. Few think that it is a nuisance. Majority of the Jamia students were not aware of the consequences of liking an advertisement. Facebook privacy policy explicitly states that they may disclose information to the third parties and this is an infringement of the users’ privacy. Thus there is a ghost profile for every user of Facebook with the private companies who advertise on Facebook.

When we asked the students about advertisement policy or the consequence of clicking on it: very few students had read as stated in the analysis. Moreover private companies push tailor made advertisements to the users. We found only one student from political science department who preferred tailored made advertisements. On the other hand few were not aware of the consequences but did not go to the advertisement page since they considered it to be a nuisance.

Surveillance
Two key points come to the forefront when we analyse surveillance. Students do not mind having their family members on Facebook since they are aware of how to customize their visibility. Most of the respondents know that government monitors content on Facebook. Two contradictory thoughts that arose in the focus group discussion were by a political science student and Urdu student. The former was comfortable with the idea of corporate having his ghost profile but he was uncomfortable with the government monitoring his profile. At the same time the Urdu student felt that it is the duty of the government to monitor their data but government should not take down their data since that would be a breach of Freedom of Expression.

Data theft
There were 4 instances of data theft and hacking. Out of a sample size of 32, there were 4 victims of data theft and hacking. Two girls faced the instance of fake profiles being created on behalf of them using their pictures and information and a boy saw his fake profile made with his picture in it. Later he found out that it was his friend who made his fake profile. Another girl narrated the episode of her brother's account being hacked. Here also this was the work of a friend. In fact her brother had shared his password with his friend who used his profile to chat with the victim’s friend. So what could be seen across all the four instances is that the accused was always someone known to the Facebook account holder.

Application & games
We found that majority do not use games and applications. Some of them do not find games and applications interesting while some felt that these games and applications slow down the speed of their computer. The ones who play games on Facebook had unconsciously started playing without realizing that they themselves clicked on allow tab when the game application asked for permission to access their information. When they were told about it, two students from Comparative religion and political science respectively decided not to play those games again.

In the case of timeline, half of the students did not apply this format of Facebook and the ones who did gave the reason of staying with the trend and also because it looks more attractive, having a big cover page and also showing data chronologically. But none of them were aware of the privacy issues of timeline.

Conclusion
We found that there are some students who feel that Social Networking Site, Facebook, is a private space and withholding information is an individual’s choice. There are others who choose to be inactive but they use Facebook merely for Socializing purposes.

We also found that the notion of privacy is changing for every individual. Students can customize their settings and decide who can view their information.

Students do not come on Facebook merely to connect but also to express themselves. One of the students interviewed is the editor of a student newspaper, who has created a Facebook group called Jamia Journal Staff Page, in which all his writer friends come to know about any development or initiative concerning the Journal. There are some other pages and communities where few other students keep posting and uploading pictures to tell other friends about their day to day activities.

We also found that there is ignorance regarding consequences of privacy infringement because 75% of the students were not aware of cookies which can steal their information even when they are online. Moreover 85% students had not read the privacy policies and were also not aware of the Facebook games and applications.

An important fact that runs across all the points made above regarding privacy is that the moment we give our names on our profile we have let go of our privacy at that moment. Facebook does not even allow us to give any pseudo or fancy names.

At the end of every discussion we asked whether they would consider deleting their profile now that they were aware of many privacy infringement issues. The students unanimously declined deleting their profile. Deleting their account would end their virtual world and a social platform of interaction which they do not want to let go off. They believe that Facebook gives them a platform to express themselves freely.

Research methodology
For the study, the main sources of information were focus group discussions for qualitative data collection. Before a focus group discussion we also circulated questionnaires for quantitative data collection.

The focus group discussions were conducted in Jamia Millia Islamia’s seven Centers/Departments; namely, Dept. of History, Dept. of Political Science, Faculty of Engineering, Dept. of Urdu Mass Media, Faculty of Education, Centre for Culture, Media and Governance, and Centre for the Study of Comparative Religions and Civilizations.

The total numbers of students interviewed for the study were 32, between the ages of 18-27 years. The numbers of students in each focus group discussions were around 5-7.

In each focus group at least one student was an acquaintance of ours. The acquaintance then managed to call in their friends for the discussion.

(The writers are final year students of MA in Media Governance at Centre for Culture Media and Governance and the research work is a part of their ongoing project on Facebook at the Centre)

(Final write-up of the three-part series. Concluded)

Part I
Part II

Bibliography
Gross Raplh & Acquisti Alessandro (2005) ‘Information Revelation & Privacy in Online Social Networks’ ACM Workshop on Privacy in the Electronic Society

Boyd Danah & Hargittai Eszter (2010) ‘Facebook Privacy Settings: Who Cares’ Peer Reviwed Journal on the Internet

Youth Privacy in the Facebook Age: Media Release’ (2010) http://privacy.org.nz/youth-privacy-in-the-facebook-age-media-release/ as accessed on 19th April 2012 at 4:00pm

Tavani T Herman (2000) ‘Privacy & Internet’

file:///C:/Users/Sahana/Documents/Responses%20to%20Globalisation/Term%20Paper%20resources/Privacy%20and%20the%20Internet.htm as accessed on 25th March 2012 at 8:00pm

Sparkes, Matthew,  23 Aug 2011,

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/google/8718580/The-ten-most-popular-social-networking-websites.html, access on April 19, 2012, 2:40 pm

‘Youth Privacy in the Facebook Age: Media Release’ (2010) http://privacy.org.nz/youth-privacy-in-the-facebook-age-media-release/ as accessed on 19th April 2012 at 4:00pm

Sparkes, Matthew, 23 Aug 2011,

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/google/8718580/The-ten-most-popular-social-networking-websites.html, access on April 19, 2012, 2:40 pm

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090216/1803373786.shtml, as accessed on 2012-04-19 at 3:00pm