Overly Social Networking Helen Drislane and Kelly Heffner May 14 2007 1 Introduction ties Facebook World of Warcraft and LinkedIn along with theirs users in order to look for correSocial Networking is one of the most popular activ lations either in age or community affiliation to the ities across the globe Social Networking websites amount of concern that users have about privacy and virtual communities from MySpace to Second Our examination is composed of our own exploration Life count their users in the millions In the rapidly of the communities an overview of the media attenexpanding online world stories about identity theft tion that each network receives and statistical analstalking big brother and child predation flood the ysis of surveys given to members of each community media bringing the question of How much online In general we found that there is a correlation in information is too much information to the fore both age and affiliation to privacy awareness alfront of the public consciousness though the correlation is stronger for affiliation than Unfortunately this question has resurrected the it is for age old vs young debate from its arguable death in the sixties bringing back the retort 21 2 Kids today They have no sense of shame They have no sense of privacy They are show offs fame whores pornographic little loons who post their diaries their phone numbers their stupid poetry for God s sake their dirty photos online They have virtual friends instead of real ones They talk in illiterate instant messages They are interested only in attention and yet they have zero attention span flitting like hummingbirds from one virtual stage to another General Perceptions For each network we provide a brief description of its purpose We also describe how the network is portrayed in the media in order to give some background about the privacy issues each community is facing 2 1 Additionally this question causes people to be concerned about privacy policies to think about who they friend on what networks and to even be choosy about what networks they are a part of MySpace is quickly becoming synonymous with sex pest paradise Facebook is considered a home for wild college students and overly gossipy adults Warcraft is for aggressive males with a taste for virtual blood In this paper we examine three online communi Facebook Facebook www facebook com is one of the biggest online social networking websites hosting approximately 25 million users 7 The website was originally created in February 2004 for college and university students but since September 2006 it has become available to anyone with an email address Facebook has many enticing features that allow users to join many networks including university networks geographic networks vocation networks etc to join 1 groups of common interest and to upload pictures 1 Worries concerning what these statements suggest about Facebook s data mining ability is mentioned in The breakdown of users by age is as follows 8 personal blogs online journals and research papers 25 34 3 million users posted online with titles such as Face it nothing is private Facebook Threats to Privacy and Big 35 44 380 000 users Brothers Big Facebook According to wikipedia Facebook intends to remove the first clause but it has 45 63 310 000 users no intention of removing the second 7 although one above 64 100 000 users Facebook employee insists that Facebook has never given nor ever intends to give users information to The general perception of Facebook is a skeptical third parties one While some articles gawk at the overwhelming amount users or at the time that these users spend on Facebook most headlines about Facebook mention 2 2 World of Warcraft either issues with privacy concerns or the amount of World of Warcraft WoW is a Massively Multi player personal information that users are posting Online Role Playing Game MMORPG set in the universe created by previous Warcraft games most notably three Real Time Strategy games The primary goal of WoW is to as you may guess kill big scary monsters As an MMORPG WoW is different than traditional video games in that the entire gameplay mechanics are designed with collaboration communication and competition in mind As the game designers themselves say Facebook poses privacy issues for students states that after a wild college weekend filled with revelry and illicit activity uploading the pictorial evidence on Facebook now seems as routine as brushing one s teeth before bed 9 A movie clip entitled Does what happens in the Facebook stay in the Facebook hypothesises a conspiracy theory surrounding the data collected by Facebook and the corporations providing the capital for Facebook s existence 1 World of Warcraft e nables thousands of players from across the globe to come together online undertaking grand quests and heroic exploits in a land of fantastic adventure Both this article and the movie clip appear in the first ten Google results on the query Facebook alongside five hits of the website itself In addition there are many concerns in the media about the following two statements within Facebook s privacy policy 2 In the media the WoW privacy issues getting attention are account privacy from black hat account hackers and worries about the game company Blizzard Entertainment acting as big brother We may use information about you that we collect from other sources including but not limited to newspapers and Internet sources such as blogs instant messaging services and other users of Facebook to supplement your profile In late 2005 the WoW Community along with privacy advocates went into an uproar after the discovery of anti cheating spyware being packaged with the game to send information to Blizzard 18 23 We may share your information with third parties including responsible companies with which we have a relationship With the release of a new WoW expansion as well as Windows Vista WoW account hacking is hitting a surge 6 14 However the player to player interactions in Warcraft have received positive attention from players the media and researchers alike 1 According to wikipedia com Facebook is the number one site on which to upload photos with over 6 million photos uploaded each day 7 2 LinkedIn is generally well perceived by the media According to one article LinkedIn s stringent privacy policy is appropriate to its professional bent and the site does a good job of protecting its clients from public view 3 The two main