Privacy issue in Instagram’s Terms of Use and Privacy Policy

Patranun LimudompornPolicy PrimerNETS5003 Internet Power Politics (Semester 2, 2015)

Topics

• Know the platform• Know about their Terms of Use, Privacy Policy.• Privacy Issue

Push the Button by j4p4nOpenclipart.org

What is Instagram?

• Online photos and short videos sharing platform. (Instagram, n.d.)

• Founded in 2010, sold to Facebook in 2012. (Rusli, 2012)

• “Visual blog” format. (Murugesan, 2007)• Newer content first, allows

comment, content in visual format.

Instagram screenshotCopyright © 2015 Patranun

Limudomporn. All Right Reserved.

Complications: TOU and Privacy Policy

• Instagram separated between Terms of Use/Terms of Service and Privacy Policy• Terms of Use is dealing with the content and behavior. Very

long.• Privacy Policy is a guideline how they will use the information.

Very long.• Both of them require user to agree prior to the use of services.• Very complicated.

head scratcher by johnny_automaticOpenclipart.org

Privacy Issue

• Virtually collect every interaction on their services, e.g. Comments. If you use it on your phone, they will collect a device identifier data too.

• You can turn off some functions, such as geotagging function or limited access your account from public.

(Instagram, 2013)

Watching the watchmen by faltantornillos, Openclipart.org

Privacy Issue

• They allow to share your information to third-parties without informing you in advance.

• They will store your data for a period of time; they don’t tell how long but only stated that it is within a reasonable timeframe.

• In short, you have certain degree of control but not total control of your data; they not clearly indicate in the case of data breach/leak.

(Instagram, 2013)

Privacy Issue

• You can set your profile and content private, of course.• But if you share it via online social network, it is no longer

private.(Instagram, 2013)

“If someone with a private profile shares a photo or video to a social network (like Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare and so on) using Instagram, the image will be visible on that network and the permalink will be active.”

(Instagram, n.d.)

Instagram privacy hole

• Quartz’s reported in January 2015 (Yanofsky ,2015) that many users discover privacy hole in Instagram.

• If you set your profile public before make it as a private, your photos prior to private remain publicly accessible.

• Instagram later patch the hole.

Theoretical Perspective

• Marmor (2015:22) argues that the right to privacy is a right to have “a reasonable measure of control over ways you present yourself to others.” It is not about the protection of your actions.

• Although the data has been anonymized, many cases still link back to the user. It has potential to identified someone in the physical world (Barbaro & Zeller Jr., 2006; Goettke & Christiana, 2007).

• You might be the owner of your content, but you don’t have the control (Zittrain, 2009).

Theoretical Perspective

• Instagram does not clearly stated how they handle your information and content; they just give a general framework.

• Users cannot completely control the presentation of themselves: there is a compromise on the Instagram platform. Not only limited to your contents but also data from your devices.

How to protect yourself?

• Aware what you post: you cannot control your content once uploaded.

• Minimize data collection by allow apps to collect minimal set of data.

• Be aware of your privacy, set your Instagram to private if you could.

Five Data Privacy Principles from Mozilla (Put on a museum wall)

2014By Anne Wuyts

Thank youThis presentation is a part of the assessments in the unit. The Instagram logo is a trademark of Instagram, LLC. The usage of the Instagram glyph and multi-color logo are subject to fair dealing under for review and criticism criteria. Other trademarks and tradenames belongs to the respective companies or organizations.All other media in this presentation, unless stated otherwise, are govern by the Creative Commons license and/or public domain. Usage of other media are comply with the “fair dealing” criteria for review and criticism.

References

Barbaro, M., & Zeller Jr., T. (2006, August 9). A Face Is Exposed for AOL Searcher No. 4417749. New York Times.

Goettke, R., & Christiana, J. (2007). Privacy and Online Social Networking Websites Computer Science 199r: Special Topics in Computer Science Computation and Society: Privacy and Technology

Instagram. (n.d.-a). Controlling Your Visibility. Instagram Privacy & Safety Center. Retrieved September 29, 2015, from https://help.instagram.com/116024195217477/

Instagram. (n.d.-b). FAQ. Instagram. Retrieved September 29, 2015, from https://instagram.com/about/faq/

Instagram. (2013, January 19). Privacy Policy. Instagram Privacy & Safety Center. Retrieved October 1, 2015, from https://help.instagram.com/155833707900388

Instagram. (2013, January 19). Terms of Use. Instagram Privacy & Safety Center. Retrieved October 1, 2015, from https://help.instagram.com/478745558852511

References

Marmor, A. (2015). What Is the Right to Privacy? Philosophy & Public Affairs, 43(1), 3-26. doi: 10.1111/papa.12040

Murugesan, S. (2007). Understanding Web 2.0. IT Professional, 9(4), 34-41. doi: 10.1109/MITP.2007.78

Rusli, E. M. (2012, April 9). Facebook Buys Instagram for $1 Billion. New York Times.

Zittrain, J. (2009, July 19). Lost in the Cloud. New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/20/opinion/20zittrain.html?tntemail1=y&_r=3&emc=tnt&pagewanted=all

Attribution/Credit

All clipart images in this video came from Openclipart.org and licensed

under the Public-domain alike license. Here is the list of clipart imagesusing in this presentation:• Watching the watchmen by faltantornillos• Push the Button by j4p4n• head scratcher by johnny_automatic

Some pictures in this video using under the Creative Commons licenses: all of them are from Flickr. Here is the list of attributions:• Five Data Privacy Principles from Mozilla (Put on a museum wall)

2014, Anny Wuyts; CC-BY (flickr)