Dr. N. Jayalakshmi and R.G. Kavitha, International Journal of Research in Engineering, IT and Social Sciences, ISSN 2250-0588, Impact Factor: 6.452, Volume 08 Issue 07, July 2018, Page 119-123 The Privacy Risks in “Liking” on Facebook Dr. N. Jayalakshmi1 and R. G. Kavitha2 1(Professor, Dept. of CSE, Saveetha Engineering College, Chennai, India) 2(Research Scholar, Research & Development Centre, Bharathiar University, Coimbatore, India) Abstract: With the popularity of Facebook, it is becoming more and easier for the users to share resources such as status, photos, blog, videos and so on. Individual users share plenty of personal information such as name, gender, age, birthday, email address, phone number and political views and so on. This leads to a privacy breach causing leakage of users’ private information. In this paper, privacy risks with the “Like” button on Facebook are identified. A privacy model for “Like” button is also proposed to enhance the personal level privacy in Facebook. Keywords: Facebook, “Like” button, Privacy risks, Privacy model. I. INTRODUCTION The most easily recognized currency of Facebook is “Like”. A research The “Like” button is a one of the features of the Facebook. We can use Like button to like the contents such as photos, comments, status updates etc. When we like the posts, all the posts that we liked will be placed on the News Feed of our friends. Our likes can reveal the sensitive personal information such as our personality traits, IQ, race, age, gender, religious and political views, how happy we are, and even whether we use addictive substances or not. Stealing and abusing privacy information on Facebook enhances the privacy concern of the people [9]. This paper presents a privacy model for “Like” button on Facebook that technically enforcesthe protection of the personal information of a user. Why we “Like” A research study shows thatyoung Facebook users enjoy using the “Like” button comparing to other age group Facebook users [4].But there are some factors for not liking a status, photo or page.Figure 1 shows the reasons for liking a brand on Facebook [8]. Here are the reasons why we like: It is a quick and easy nod Liking is a way of answering 'yes' or of showing agreement, understanding, or approval. It is the easiest way to indicate positivity about a piece of content without actually writing a comment. To affirm something about ourselves We use “Like” button to affirm something about ourselves. A recent research study involved more than 58,000 people to make their likes public. It also showed that their Likes could revealthe sensitive personal information that they had not disclosed: To show virtual empathy Most of us like to show unity with a friend. We also like to show acquaintance and our way of thinking. We spend more time in instant message chats to show our virtual empathy. Virtual empathy is one of the factors to express real-world empathy. To get something in return “Most people like the brands to receive coupons and regular updates from companies they like”, says a Syncapse study. Figure 1 shows the reasons for liking a brand on Facebook [8]. Figure1: The reasons for liking a brand on Facebook http://indusedu.org Page 119 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License Dr. N. Jayalakshmi and R.G. Kavitha, International Journal of Research in Engineering, IT and Social Sciences, ISSN 2250-0588, Impact Factor: 6.452, Volume 08 Issue 07, July 2018, Page 119-123 The reasons for not “Liking” Figure 2: The reasons for “not liking” a brand on Facebook A research report says that our reasons for not liking a brand focus on privacy and quality of the social media experience. Figure 2 shows the reasons for not liking a brand on Facebook [8]. Types of Likes There are several types of likes on Facebook. We could see 16 different categories: Movies, Television, Music, Books, Sports Teams, Athletes, and Other. Liking a page has become quite a personal statement. Our friends and others can make assumptions about us just by looking at the things we like on Facebook. Psychology of liking “Like button can boost or shatter one’s ego—in effect, it has become an extension of one's digital personal", says anthropologist Krystal D'Costa. Other researchers have discovered that “Liking” on Facebook actually decreases the feeling of loneliness. It is one of the easiest ways to communicate positive feedback. The act of liking something is evidence of one's existence in the online realm. Comments affiliated with the like 'signature' actually constitute your reputation online, and liking the same things that others within our network already like reaffirms our connection with the group by identifying points we hold in common. And there is, of course, the hope that a favor will be reciprocated—I liked your post, now you have to like mine. The number of likes Like button on Facebook isan ubiquitous feature of the Web. It is one of the ways toascertain the popularity of a website or piece of content. We can also find out the number of users who liked each piece of content using Like button. But it has been found out that these numbers can be inflated easily. Xue Liu, a professor of computer science at McGill says that fake Likes could be generated easily on the Internet. He also adds that Like numbers can also be faked very easily Facebook users are not aware of exactly what kinds of actions generate a “Like”. It is generally assumed that a single user can only generate one Like, but that is not actually the case. When the user shares a link on Facebook with an embedded “Like” button, it increases the count by one.If the same user comments on the same post, then also it increases the count by one.. The researchers also found that if a Facebook user deletes a post, the Like count doesn't correspondingly drop. But most of the Facebook users are not aware of these facts. Like-farming To cultivate more likes and shares, the scammers post an attention-grabbing story on Facebook.This technique is knows as Like-farming..When a post gets more likes and shares, it will be shown up in people's News Feeds. Then thescammers add something malicious to the posts to get credit card data of the people.[10]. Avoiding like-farming We should be very judicious about what we like on Facebook. We should not just reflexively click "Like" on everything. We should take a look at where the post is coming from. If it is from an unknown person, it could be a friend of a friend or it could be a complete stranger. We should be very cautious before we click on Like button on Facebook. A good security measure is to minimize our likes. By minimizing our Likes, we can reduce the clutter in our friends' News Feed as well as in our News Feed. http://indusedu.org Page 120 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License Dr. N. Jayalakshmi and R.G. Kavitha, International Journal of Research in Engineering, IT and Social Sciences, ISSN 2250-0588, Impact Factor: 6.452, Volume 08 Issue 07, July 2018, Page 119-123 Privacy risks with “Like” button on Facebook One of the features of the Facebook that greatly affects our privacy is the "Like" button. Facebook “Like” button is a simple "thumbs-up" icon that Facebook users are very familiar with. But if we click on the "Like" button, we are authorizing Facebook to place all our likes on the newsfeeds of all our friends. Facebook user can make use of this easily accessible digital record of our behavior to extract sensitive personal information about us. We might not even share such personal information with our close friends. Facebook Likes present serious risks related to users’ privacy [5]. Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg introduced the feature that “Like” button could be placed on the Web pages. But Facebook can easily track people as they switch from one website to another site using their “Likes”. “Liking” something or somebody has spread outside the boundaries of Facebook to other sites. Facebook user can press “Like” after reading an article, purchasing a product or watching a movie. “Liking” has become one of the ways to indicate the consumer's satisfaction with the product or content. Our likes reveal more about us than we think. Our “Likes” has become a key source of the data. Our “Likes” in News Feed implicitly tell Facebook to shows us more of such information. Our likes can predict individual psycho-demographic profiles. Almost every popular website has a Facebook “Like” button. Millions of people press “Like” button every day, unaware of the full consequences. "If you put a Like button on your site, you're potentially selling out your users' privacy even if they never press that button," says Nicole Ozer, an attorney with the ACLU of Northern California. He also adds that "If an organization puts a Like button on their site, they're potentially telling Facebook about everyone who visits their Web site, every time that person visits their Web site." Facebook like button reports to Facebook whenever a user visits a page containing a like button. Facebook uses those reports to compile records of what websites people visit. Facebook's social plug-ins can easily collect the address of the Web page being visited and the Internet address of the visitor as soon as the page is loaded--clicking on the Like button is not required, even if the visitor is not a Facebook user or is not logged in.