Who really owns and controls the data online?
An increasing part of people’s social lives are being spent and shared on Social Networking sites. And that trend is just growing with Twitter also making an announcement that it is targetting a billion user base.
It is getting inevitable that people share lots of information on sites like Facebook, and other similar sites. However, when it comes to who controls the data on these sites, people should really read the “fine-print”.
As quite a few might have experienced, Facebook periodically blocks accounts of any users exhibiting “suspicious behaviour”. A blog post actually summarizes this in a post entitled “13 Reasons your Facebook Account will be Disabled”!
Apparently this could range from just adding “too many” friends at one, sending “too many” messages or poking “too many” friends. The underlying theme is the “too many” because Facebook considers this as spam and takes evasive action immediately.
Besides controlling how you behave on these sites, the owners also have rights over what you have posted and how they use it (for their gains!). Here is a snip from Google’s Terms of Service -
“By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive licence [sic] to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services”
The core point is that Google can parse this content in any which pay and let advertisers know, so that you can be targetted. though we don’t exactly “lose” any rights over the content, Google still has the authority to use, reuse information and/or transfer that right to anyone it wants.
The fun part actually ends right there! People have to really keep in mind that anything posted online is subject to several different laws, Terms of Service, and is NOT PERSONAL anymore from the time it exits your keypads!
