BT security boss airs Facebook privacy concerns

BT’s Chief Security Technology Officer, Bruce Schneier, has made an interesting speech which highlights the dangers of social networks and their privacy policies (or lack of them) at the RSA Europe 2010 conference.

He singled out Facebook specifically as he discussed how people didn’t understand the issue of online privacy properly, or realise how the data footprint they leave from social networking can be used to make a profit with third parties.

Schneier talked about the death of privacy, and ISPreview quoted him as saying: “We are witnessing massive invasions of privacy and businesses are deliberately manipulating this. The CEOs are killing it because technology is changing the balance of privacy. The social norms are being set by businesses with a profit motive.”

He argued that individuals should be given more control over their data stored by social networks, and that it was easier for these companies just to store everything, rather than attempt any potentially costly effort at managing the data in a more effective form.

As it is, Schneier pointed out that social networks such as Facebook never completely forget any of your data, and it will still be there “after you die and beyond.”

Of course, Facebook is so widespread and embedded now, it’s almost as if it’s becoming a part of our social fabric, which gives it a potentially worrying amount of leeway in what it can attempt to do or get away with.

For its part, Facebook insists that while advertising is its business model, it never shares any personally identifiable information with advertisers, who only see anonymised and aggregated data.