Forget Me Do: Empowering user privacy on social network sites

Forget Me Do, a smartphone app that automatically deletes old status updates and photo tags on Facebook, so what you once revealed on a social network cannot be used against you.

Ben Smyth (2014) Forget Me Do: Empowering user privacy on social network sites. Technical Report 2014/10, Forget Me Do Limited.

Abstract

Social network sites support identity, relationships, and community. These three attributes of social interaction are fundamental to the basic human need for love, affection, and belongingness; creating a powerful motivation for the adoption of social network sites. By definition, social interaction cannot be conducted in private and social network sites have resulted in an unprecedented deluge of information revelations. Information revelations on social network sites expose individuals to the risk of privacy violations. Facts unearthed by these violations have the potential to crush the basic human need for love, affection, and belongingness. We respond to the risks associated with information revelations: we propose deleting information that can be used to an individual's disadvantage. Thereby freeing individuals from the consequences of information revelations. We acknowledge that deleting all information is not a viable solution, since this would eliminate the advantages offered by social network sites. We overcome this issue by only deleting information that satisfies some deletion criteria. For instance, information older than a particular date. We have implemented our response as a smartphone application called Forget Me Do, which automatically deletes status updates and removes tags from photos stored on Facebook. The app is available on Android and iOS. We hope to extend our app to other social network sites in the future. Our response does not rely on software modifications to social network sites, hence, we immediately empower the general public with a tool that mitigates against the harms posed by information revelations.

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  title = {{Forget Me Do:}}
        # {{ Empowering user privacy on social network sites}},
  year = {2014}, author = {Ben Smyth},
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