Facebook privacy concerns

10:14 AM

By: Brandon Walker

As more users of the social networking site Facebook learn their personal phone contacts have been posted online, an internet security expert says the controversy speaks to the larger problem of online security. Our Brandon Walker reports.

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ALBANY, N.Y. — By now, chances are, you’ve heard, contacts from your personal cell phone can be found by signing in to your Facebook account.

Sanjay Goel is Director of Research for Information Forensics and Assurance for the State of New York. Bottom line, he says, the only way out of having your phone book online is to stop synching your smart phone to the site.

“Facebook allows you to do that and that’s at your own discretion. So one thing you can do is go on Facebook and delete your personal information. You can stop from synching your entire smart phone onto Facebook,” Goel said.

For its part, Facebook maintains only the user can see the phone numbers, not the public. While Goel says that might be true, he says the company hasn’t offered any assurances that hackers won’t be able to access your info.

Goel said, “Or Facebook itself has all of their personal information now because it resides on its servers and later on if they decide to use that information for marketing they have the ability to do that.”

While what Facebook may or may not do with your contacts might make you feel uncomfortable, this question of online security speaks to an international problem involving how to govern what’s done online.”

“Different countries have slightly different ways view of the civil rights, so it’s creating a much larger conflict worldwide,” Goel said.

A conflict Goel suspects won’t calm down until countries work together to establish a set of norms used to govern internet activity.

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