Exercise 18

Facebook
Facebook's privacy policies are categorized into four different groups. They are profile, search, news feed and wall, and applications. You have control over the information you are sharing with other people and you have access to the information that you want to share. Facebook is a licensee of the TRUSTe Privacy Program, which is a non-profit organization. When using facebook, you provide personal information you knowingly provide and website information that is collected by facebook when you register. Facebook keeps a backup of all the activity you have done on facebook. You cannot use Facebook under 13 years of age and recommend children between 13 and 18 have parental supervision. They own all the information you put about yourself in your profile, and can collect information about you based on the other websites that you go to in order to "enhance your profile". You can usually make it so that this function isn't performed on your profile.

My facebook profile settings are set up so that my networks and friends can view the information about me. I think that is the default setting because I don't remember ever changing it. When people search my name, my facebook is set up to where everyone can find me and can see all the basic information that facebook provides when searching for people. When I comment on different things such as someone's wall or a note or things of the sort, it is set to where it can show up on other people's news feed. Ads can show information to only my friends. Others can see all the applications that I have on my facebook. Overall, I haven't set many (or maybe any) privacy settings but have left them on default.


Tamu Email
The organization in charge of privacy settings for this website is The Office of the Vice President and Associate Provost for Information Technology (VPAPIT). They do not collect information about the websites that one attends and does not use "cookies" to collect information. They do automatically collect certain technical information when you automatically visit the site, however none of this is personal information. It is only so that they can get a good idea of the most popular features and what is widely used within the site to improve it. When emailing them with a question, the information you provide is only used to respond to the particular question that is needed.

My privacy settings are completely by default. They do not have a way to change the information because they already have a very protected privacy setting. All of the information that is explained above is what my settings are at.




iTunes

iTunes says that they collect personal information from customers in order to provide the best customer service possible. There is a way that you can set your preferences to where you don't allow them to see your personal information and therefore aren't kept up to date on the latest purchases. The information that they collect is the pertinent information they ask when buying something from the iTunes gift store such as name, email, mailing address, etc... They also collect information when talking to them on the phone about a certain product. They retain the information of the things that you search and buy on iTunes in order to provide better customer service in the future by advertising songs and products specific to your likings. Public information that one gives is public and therefore there is little privacy concerns taken. The information that is given that is private apple takes very seriously and only shares within legal entities within apple.

My privacy settings for iTunes is the default settings. I have not made it so that apple can't view any of my information. However, the only thing that I do that would give them information is buy songs on the iTunes store which provides little information to iTunes. They do not even need to know my mailing address for that.



Wells Fargo
Wells Fargo goes to great lengths to protect the privacy of their customers online especially considering there is so much fraud that can occur within banking systems. They do not sell customer information to third parties and they are very careful to safeguard every single transaction made at every level within the organization as well as within the individual transaction. They limit employee interaction with customer information and have specific policies and procedures set up to further ensure safety for customers. The information they do collect is for improved customer relations and is used to service your accounts and meet your financial needs. You can also choose to not allow Wells Fargo to share information amongst affiliates.

The privacy settings that I have for Wells Fargo are the default settings, once again. I completely trust the great lengths they go through to provide privacy and to protect their customers, so I do not feel as though any extra privacy is needed. Since they are a banking company, I realize that if anything were to happen with my privacy as their customer, they would get in loads of trouble, so I know that they are diligent and making sure that won't happen.



Howdy

The information that is collected from users of howdy is very limited and basic. The information that they do collect is once again to provide better customer service. They also use it to collect general trends and summary statistics from their users. The information is only used by howdy if the information that you provide about yourself are necessary to help law investigations or legal proceedings. Cookies are collected to personalize users home page. Howdy goes through great lengths to make the website secure.

There are no other options for privacy settings, it is the same for everyone using howdy. Therefore, my settings are on the default settings for the website.