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By: Randall Norman
Online privacy is a hotly debated topic right now. Some of this attention stems from the recent release of the Obama Administration’s Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights and the other issuances of proposed methods to regulate Internet privacy by various groups. Hopefully, at least part of the current interest in online privacy can be attributed to the awareness and concern of Internet users about the collection of their data. Different websites and applications utilize an impressive array of techniques to monitor the online behavior and collect the personal information of users.
While the extent to which companies engage in the collection of user data varies greatly, some websites are notorious for gathering the personal information of its users. One such infamous collector is Facebook. Both the social networking website itself and many of the applications offered on the website are attractive to users because of the seemingly free status. However, such websites and applications that do not charge a monetary fee are profiting from the popularity of their products by collecting the personal information of users and selling this data to online advertising companies.
Although many sites track the behavior of users, Facebook is particularly tailored to collect personal information as a social networking website. On Facebook, users voluntarily choose to share all kinds of details about themselves, allowing the website to cater to the $28 billion online advertising industry. Additionally, Facebook boasts over 800-million users, who provide massive amounts of personal data for collection.
Facebook largely derives its revenues either directly, or indirectly through the quizzes, games, and other applications offered, from the advertising services that use the collected data to target users with customized ads based on profile and online behavior. In May 2012, when the company plans to go public, Facebook could potentially boast an initial public offering of more than $100 billion on the Nasdaq Stock Market. This value illustrates the substantial demand for collected user data and underscores the extensive effect that new regulations for online privacy will have, regardless of the form adopted.