The target of this Wiki will be to show the advantages and disadvantages to use Social Network Sites(SNSs). The main question is the following "What about privacy?"
By definition, all humans are social beings and need to have contact and share information with other people with the same interests. SNSs provide clear benefits to society but we have to make everybody aware of all inherent risks. Education will be the most urgent measure to be taken. Legislation and policy don't cover actually all of the problems generated by the SNS in relation with privacy and security. It must be reviewed in all European countries and new directives must be voted in order to meet the present and future needs in this domain.
We have to be concerned about the new technologies which are evolving like face recognition, SNSs on mobile phone, location with GPS.
If we hinder our kids from participating in Social Networks, they will be rejected automatically by this new society and considered anti-social by their friends, colleagues and even family. We need to protect them from the predators who represent a small group of people. The only way to do so, is to make them aware of these risks by training, information, advice and control, especially when they start to use SNSs. We have also to take influence on new legislation concerning the SNSs providers in order to protect our privacy and to force them to be more transparent about what they send to whom. We are now free to make the choice between more privacy or more transparency.
It will be useful to have a classification of the different sites in a way similar to the common criteria, a level of privacy, security and trust concerning the different existing SNSs. Another way is to propose something new and more secure to the users. An enquiry in the field of peer-to-peer tools will be a possibility. SNSs are not the final solution. Trends keep changing and something new more secure will come up sooner or later.
I sent a Questionnaire concerning privacy in Social Network Site to all Privacy commissioner in Europe. You will find some answers in the Actions page for each countries.
You will also find a page concerning Regulation in Europe.
I invite you to add other regulation I didn't find.
L. Collée