Privacy Panel, A Facebook Application

Abstract

Facebook has more than 1.1 billion users accessing their website each month and this number is growing daily. People share information including their education, work, likes, photos, videos, and locations. However, they are not always aware of the range of their information disclosure and the audience. Complicating things further, many people view Facebook privacy settings as complex, confusing, and often changing. In order to address this issue, we have developed a Facebook web application called “Privacy Panel.” Privacy Panel can be added to a user’s Facebook account, and it provides a simple and straightforward representation of many types of disclosed information. Furthermore, this application collects and stores users’ information such as friends, photos, posts, likes, and basic information for further analysis. By analyzing users’ information, Privacy Panel will be able to give its users feedback and tips about their privacy on Facebook in comparison with others. These tips will notify the users of how close their privacy settings are to other users. In addition, we are planning on providing a “Friend’s Report” section which categorizes the user’s friends based on their friendship interactions. According to this kind of report, users can determine if different settings should be applied, or friendships should be altered.