A Study of Current State of Privacy Policies in Social Networks

Abstract

Objective: The study aims is to bring forward the hardship in understanding the current scenario of privacy policies in social networks from a user/customer’s perspective. Methods: To understand how privacy policies have evolved through time, two of the biggest and most influential social networks, namely ‘google.com’ and ‘twitter.com’ have been studied. Their privacy policies have been analyzed from the time of inception, carefully taking each change into account. Other metrics like word and technical jargon usage has also been considered. Findings: Policies are getting harder to read with time. This includes increasing amount of ambiguous statements like, ‘we may’, more technical language, decreasing number of examples, and exponentially increasing length of the policies. There’s also the practice of splitting the privacy policy over multiple pages that social networks are using in order to make their policies small and readable, which has a negative effect. Applications/improvements: The study restarts an open discussion on how policies should evolve with evolving inclusion of technology in people’s lives. As people rely more on technology than ever, our study shows that rethinking the way we share privacy policies is required. Keywords: Open Social Networks, Privacy, Privacy Policy, Security, Terms of Service, User Awareness.