Category Archives: Privacy

miXXerS Website Development Theory

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The miXXerS Web Application is about the sharing of anything that is related to Music. A registration/login system is implemented so that only registered users are able to post/edit/delete/rate/comment on recipes. Moreover, music can be organised by categories, users can view any music update that under a specific category.

Cookies: Our website uses “cookie” technology. A cookie is a small data file that is placed on the hard drive of your device such as laptop or mobile browsers when you a website. A “session cookie” expires immediately when you end your session (i.e., close your browser). The cookie allows us to recognize you or/and your device when you return to our website. You can disable cookies at any time by using your browser options; however, if you do not register with us, we will not able to recognize you as our miXXerS member.

Technology and Techniques to develop the miXXerS Website:

Technology and Technique

Terms and Conditions, Privacy and Trust

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Below is a summary of our privacy policy. We will adhere to the mischance principle and the voluntary principle for our site as outlined by Robert L. McArthur (2001). miXXerS cannot feasibly be reasonable for the privacy of information that can easily be discovered. Users that want to anonymise or encrypt their communication would not be able to use miXXers and it is inevitable that records will be left in caches, cookies and servers as with all websites. In addition to gain users trust we will be transparent on how information is being used in line with Weitzner et al (2008). We will also adhere to the EU’s Data Protection Directive, which is also internationally regarded as one of the most stringent data privacy laws globally. By adhering to this standard we will not only be able to expand successfully in Europe but also internationally and in a way which respects the privacy of our users. In addition given the difficult users face in reading privacy policies (McDonald, A. and Cranor, L. 2008) we will attempt to make our policies as user friendly as possible and let users know whenever we have made a change to our policy. However given the service is free to users there will inevitably be a privacy trade off and this will entail some level of risk management on the part of our users (Dunfee T et al. 1999).

miXXerS’ Web Application is about the sharing of anything that is related to music/events. A registration/login system is implemented so that only registered users are able to post/edit/delete/rate/comment on recipes. Moreover, music can be organised by categories, users can view any music update that under a specific category.

Users will be engaging in Policy based trust by signing up to our network and we will be utilising the concept of provenance based trust for the site (Moreau 2009). However reputation based trust is extremely important and so we must ensure we adhere to the policies that our users have signed onto to ensure that we do no risk our reputation, increase trust which would in turn support user growth.

Cookies: Our website uses “cookie” technology. A cookie is a small data file that is placed on the hard drive of your device such as laptop or mobile browsers when you a website. A “session cookie” expires immediately when you end your session (i.e., close your browser). The cookie allows us to recognize you or/and your device when you return to our website. You can disable cookies at any time by using your browser options; however, if you do not register with us, we will not able to recognize you as our MiXXer member.

Technology and Techniques to develop MiXXer Website:

Technology and Technique

Terms and Conditions

Welcome to miXXerS.com. This section will describe the standards and protocols as a Privacy Policy. As a visitor to miXXerS, your trust is our most important asset. This Privacy policy is provided to inform you of our policies and practices regarding how we collect, use, disclosure, transfer and store information about you.

MiXXer Privacy Policy_Blog.

Thanks for choosing miXXerS. In this policy, the words “we”, “our”, and “us” refer to miXXerS. In order to use our miXXerS service or website, miXXerS Limited may need to collect personally identifiable information and this Privacy Policy is where we describe the information we collect, how we use such information, and how you can manage and control the use of your information.

When using or interacting with our website, you are entering into a binding contract with us and consenting to the use of your information as explained in this Privacy Policy.

 

What kinds of information do we collect_blog

General Data

When you register for an account to use our service, we collect “personally identifiable information” or “personal information” mean any information by which you can be identified or contacted, such as your name (first and last), address (city, state, zip), e-mail address, telephone number, etc. We may store this information so that it can be used for the purposes in connecting you with others.We may also disclose your personally identifiable information when you ask us to do so or when we believe it is required by law.

Payment Data

When you sign up for a Premium Account that require payment subscription or make other purchases through the service, your credit card information and other financial data we need to process your payment are collected and stores by a third party payment processor.

How do we use this information_Blog

We use your personal information that we collect to provide you with the best services and experience. We may also, (ii) communicate with you for Service-related purposes, including promotional e-mails, sponsorships or messages, (iii) enable and promote the Service, including features and content of the Service, and products and services made available through the Service such as sharing, user interactions, notifications and suggestions, and integration with third party services.

 

How is this information shared_Blog

The miXXerS Service is a social service for music which offers many ways in searching, share the music or content related to music at music board, and we enable users to explore who else is using the Service and their public profiles.

Your account information is or may be publicly available to others by default, such as your name and/or username, profile picture, location, including the music you add or favourite. Your activity on the Service will automatically appear in the activity feed of friends and other users who follow you or your profile content.

 

References:

Dunfee T.W, Smith N. and Ross W.T. Social contracts and marketing ethics. The Journal of Marketing (1999) vol. 63 (3)

McDonald, A. and Cranor, L. The Cost of Reading Privacy Policies. I/S: A Journal of Law and Policy for the Information Society. 2008 Privacy Year in Review issue

Moreau. The foundations for provenance on the web. Foundations and Trends in Web Science (2009)

Weitzner DJ, Abelson H, Berners-Lee T, Feigenbaum J, Sussman GJ. Information Accountability, Communications of the ACM (2008) vol. 51 (6) pp. 82-87

Potential Risks

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There are several risks that may arise when using social networking sites which users may tend to ignore. These are described below.

Identity theft (IT) – IT is one of the major concerns related with social media. So much information is provide by the individual on these platforms that it is obvious to guess the rest of the information, which leads to identity theft which is further used to commit cyber crime such as fraud.

Sexual Predators – Once again due to disclosure of a lot of confidential information on the webpage, sexual predators are one of biggest concerns faced by social media website. As an individual could easily hide their true identity and target young vulnerable children who are not capable to distinguishing if an individual is legit or a sex predator.

Stalking – Staking is something which raises alarm again and again and is something which is faced by social media website on a regular basis. As individuals cannot see if anyone is looking at their personal information such as pictures or videos it makes it so much easier for a stalker. Even though the majority of the big social media website are providing a lot of facilities to privatise your personal profile there will always be slight chance of stalking.

Unintentional Fame – This is also very lethal form of harassment. This kind of situation occurs when the picture, video or piece of music created by an individual is sent around on social media websites without their consent. As a result of such harassment many young teenager have committed suicide. Once again social media websites have provided the user with the facilities to report such contents which can be cause such circumstances and miXXers will do the same on its site.

Employment concerns – Personally I believe social media platforms and employee do not mix together. This is an issue of many organisation and their employee. This issue has been raised and talked about numerous time by academic research. A lot of individual have lost their job due to uploading inappropriate information regarding working, personal information or information about desecrate circumstance about certain individual, inappropriate images or videos and many more.

Online harassment – This is something which is commonly seen in teenage groups, where teenage are victimised because of their physical appearance , ethnic background etc. This is an extremely serious issue as it can lead to fatal circumstance, this also leave negative impact of social media platform as they are created to keep in touch with family and friends socially rather than for bullying and harassment. (Wikipedia.,2015.)

Privacy Concerns – Privacy of confidential information about an individual has always been a major concern for many year. Due to the fast improvement in the technology and availability of data, this concern is increasing as an individual can share large amount information about their themselves or other without even realising via single click.

According to Acquisi and Grossklags (2007) privacy choices are affected by incomplete and asymmetric information which is defined by ‘bounded rationality ‘. In addition ignorance is rationalised (rational ignorance) because users may consider that truly learning about and understanding privacy implications and acting on that knowledge would actually outweigh the benefits of ignoring the risks.

A lot of personal information such as date of birth, contact details, employment and education history information is broadcasted in Facebook which can easily be for unlawful purposes.

Individuals are sharing their current location via Facebook chat. This can be extremely dangerous as teenager or pre teenagers can leave their current location on which can result in stalker or sex predators follow them and the result of that could be fatal. Here the ‘Valence Effect’ outlined by Acquisi and Grossklags (2007) can be seen to be in effect as a behavioral anomaly as users over-estimate that there will only be a positive effect.

This is something which has been highlighted via a board of member at the university. University students taking pictures of each other or members of staff and uploading them online without their consent.

Invasive privacy agreement is something which always catches the attention of law abiding citizens. This agreement means that an individual is agreeing that all the information which they upload on the website such as their confidential information including pictures and videos are property of the service provider, which seems a bit odd.

There are thousands of agencies which are standing in the queue to retrieve confidential information regarding individual, in order to understand individual behaviour better. Recently, Twitter has admitted that they were scanning the telephone numbers of their customers in order to understand their behaviour better without their consent. This shows there is a lot more going on behind the scenes without your knowledge. It hints at another behavioural anomaly from Acquisi and Grossklags (2007) that users are ‘over confident’ in their knowledge and ability to actually protect their privacy. There are no technologies easily available to users that lets them delete all confidential information about themselves from internet. (Wikipedia.,2015.) There is also essentially a Privacy Paradox (Zafeiropoulou M 2013 et al) because though users may say they are not willing to share information on these sites in practice they still do it. This helps to highlight that despite the dangers that may arise in using these sites, even when aware of them users still usually decide to use them.

Reference:

Acquisi and Grossklags. What Can Behavioral Economics Teach Us About Privacy?, Digital Privacy: Theory, Technologies and Practices Auerbach Publications (Taylor and Francis Group) pp. 363-377 (2007)

Wikipedia.,2015. Privacy concerns with social networking services. Available from:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privacy_concerns_with_social_networking_services#Privacy_Concerns [Accessed on 23th april 2015]

Wikipedia.,2015.Privacy issues of social networking sites. Available from:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privacy_issues_of_social_networking_sites [Accessed on 23rd april 2015]

Zafeiropoulou, Aristea M., Millard, David E., Webber, Craig and O’Hara, Kieron (2013) Unpicking the privacy paradox: can structuration theory help to explain location-based privacy decisions? In, ACM Web Science 2013 (WebSci ’13), Paris, France, 02 – 04 May 2013.

Ethical Considerations for miXXerS

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“Further well trodden themes in social networking research – such as identity, use/non-use, motives for use, privacy, surveillance, friending, commodification, and user exploitation – all surface issues with ethical dimensions”. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

I was tasked with looking at the ethical issues that may arise in developing miXXerS. Ethical issues that arise with interactions between users, online and offline communities, social network developers, corporations, governments and other institutions are complex. Social networks have changed how we create and/or maintain social relationships/roles and there are ethical implications of this.  Each stakeholder can have diverse and also conflicting motives and interests and the same will be the case for the mixed audience of miXXerS. Social relations between people who have/desire some type of relationship or affiliation personal, business or otherwise are at the core of social networks. For miXXerS this is no exception.

Moreover, in building technological systems computer scientists often tend to build what they think would work best for the user without necessarily considering ‘disclosive computer ethics’. Instead of viewing the technology as a neutral actor this instead focuses on the moral norms and values embedded in information technologies, applications and practices. We therefore would like to build a system which considers the ethical implication of the technology itself as well as the ethical use of the site.

“the emphasis in technology design should be on achieving the greatest good for the greatest number, and developers of social networking sites are seen to have ethical responsibilities for ensuring that their designs are oriented towards achieving the desired goal. The developers, on the other hand, appear to hold a user-oriented view – they make social networking sites for people to play with.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Social networking sites can facilitate deception, social grooming and defamation. Given miXXerS is a site which combines not only music but also parties we must be aware of this. Users will be able to report unethical use of the site per our policies and we will design features which will help to support ethics. This is important. One report found that “active social networkers show a higher tolerance for activities that could be considered unethical.” and that “It appears that they are more willing to consider things that are ‘gray areas’. However, there are skeptics of such arguments. In addition, given the data that is derived from free use of the site is important for our business this also raises ethical questions which all social network sites struggle with as it has become a defacto business model for the web.