Analysis of the Facebook Privacy Settings of Young People With an Emphasis on the Czech Republic and France
Abstract
This paper aims to examine the difference in the approach to the privacy of the young generation in the Czech Republic and France. We investigate the profiles of 531 Facebook users.
The visibility of each profile was recorded in two ways - from the perspective of a friend and from the perspective of a random Facebook user. The main aim is to find in which country the young people are more responsible in approach to the publication of their personal data on the social networking site Facebook, both in relation to their list of friends as well as to the general internet public.
We analyze significant differences between the settings of the service of young people in the Czech Republic and France. While the French Facebook users show more effort to protect their information in general, in case of the key items the opposite is true (email, location).
Despite of a greater tendency to publish a large number of surveyed items, the Czech users very strictly protect information that makes them identifiable at other levels (phone number, email, location). Differences in the data indicate a different role that the social network plays.
In France, the network is more tightly linked with other layers of identity of users. This naturally makes pressure for greater control of the published data.
In the Czech Republic, social networks follow more logic of remediation - rather than create a supplement to real identity, it acts as an alternative. Furthermore, we discuss the possible implications in terms of the usability of these data by other entities (e.g. marketing) including possible misuse of available data (e.g. cyberbullying, mobbing, bossing, staffing).
In conclusion, we identify the greatest risks based on the analysis and discuss the results with philosophical opinions of M. Foucault and T.
W. Adorno.