SUCCESSFUL social networking websites avoid promoting their privacy policy for fear of putting off potential members. As a result, people are sharing information online without caution 鈥� and without knowing how it is used.
So say and at the University of Cambridge, who studied the privacy policies of 29 sites, including Facebook and MySpace. Although all sites possessed a privacy policy and many stressed the importance of privacy within their policy documentation, the pair found that only seven made their privacy policy prominent when soliciting users to sign up.
What鈥檚 more, although seven of the sites had a privacy 鈥渟eal鈥� 鈥� an endorsement of good practice from an independent body 鈥� none reproduced it on their main sign-up page.
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Bonneau and Preibusch鈥檚 analysis of traffic over a three-month period showed that sites that made their privacy policies prominent were growing at rates significantly lower than the others, on average. They argue that this demonstrates that successful networks avoid advertising their privacy policies, because users would become reluctant to sign up and share information with other users and the site itself.
鈥淪ocial networking sites that promote their privacy policies grow more slowly than their competitors鈥�
鈥淓ven sites with good privacy feel that they can鈥檛 promote it, so users have no idea of what they鈥檙e getting,鈥� says Bonneau.