Merge between online shopping, social networking yields privacy concerns

Amazon.com is working to prove that it has everything — even your friends.

Today marks Data Privacy Day, an international effort to support the security of personal information. But when it comes to online shopping and social networking, the role of privacy online still raises concerns for students and faculty.

Last year’s integration of Facebook and Amazon was an alliance designed to make online shopping a social activity. According to Amazon’s website, by connecting both accounts, a user has access to Facebook’s birthday reminders coupled with Amazon’s birthday present suggestions.

Further gift suggestions are offered based on friends’ Facebook activities and “likes.” The integration also alerts users to common interests among friends.

Students such as College freshman Alexander Guo believe that the concept is an attractive one — in theory. “It’s a good way to share your interests and hobbies,” Guo said. But Guo is uncertain whether he will use the service and maintained that he would rather not use a website to receive information regarding his friends, even for gift suggestions.

Engineering freshman Brandon Cheung was also intrigued by the concept. To him, it “sounds like a very interesting idea,” but he admitted that he isn’t sure he would actually use it.

Privacy concerns also contribute to students’ hesitancy. Guo noted that privacy was an issue for him, although Facebook on its own “pokes at privacy.”

However, Chris Mustazza — the Information Technology Project Leader for the School of Arts and Sciences’ Student Technology Advisory Board — does not see the connection as a risk to privacy. Although he taught a Critical Writing seminar last fall called “Privacy in a Networked World,” Mustazza believes that a Facebook-Amazon alliance is not a threat.

“The site doesn’t appear to make anything public that wasn’t already so,” he wrote in an e-mail.

And, according to Mustazza, this connection isn’t anything new. “Amazon is really the grandfather of targeted advertising,” he wrote. “They’ve been doing this for years and are already really good at it.”

For Mustazza, this connection is only beneficial to all parties involved. The gift suggestions offered through the Amazon-Facebook connection could “improve gift-giving accuracy,” Mustazza wrote.

In his experience, Amazon is more familiar with his shopping habits than many of his friends, so the concern that Amazon could use Facebook information is pointless. “I often joke that Amazon knows me better than any human does,” Mustazza wrote.

He does, however, acknowledge that privacy concerns might prevent people from using the new benefits afforded. Mustazza believes that this misguided sense exists because the integration may remind people of other internet trends “that really were scary from a privacy perspective.” For example, social media site Blippy, which allowed people to share purchases in a similar fashion as Twitter feeds, had a vulnerability which allowed outside access to credit card numbers.

Although many students are unsure of whether connecting Amazon and Facebook was a good idea, Mustazza is confident that it could only be helpful. According to him, the “improve[d] gift-giving accuracy” is a way to make sure that “you won’t be getting the Collected Works of Justin Bieber.”

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