Client Infographic: Facebook, Privacy and Health

For the Path of the Blue Eye Project, InfoNewt (my company) recently designed the infographic: What You Need To Know: Facebook, Privacy and Health.  The group at the Path of the Blue Eye Project has done some fantastic, primary research about online users’ willingness and attitudes about sharing health information online, and specifically Facebook.

The answer is overwhelmingly “NO”.

If Facebook is so popular (Pew reports that 62% of Web users frequent sites like Facebook and MySpace), why are people shying away from sharing health content with others on the site?  To answer this question, the Path of the Blue Eye Project commissioned a national survey designed to tease out some of the reasons why Americans are reluctant to exchange health information on Facebook.  We found:

• 68% of Facebook users have not and would not share their personal health information on the site. The most commonly cited reason for refusing to share: “it’s no one’s business but my own (86%).”
• Privacy concerns may be one reason many refuse to share.  39% of non-sharers were afraid strangers would find their health information and 32% worried marketers might use it to sell products and services.
  

Online users do a lot of searching for health information, but very few are willing to share any of their own information on social sites like Facebook.

The Facebook Privacy Policy is huge, and most of the concerns why oline users are unwilling to share online information have to do with unintended people finding their information.  Insurance companies, marketers and strangers top the list of concerns.

Thanks again to Fard and the team at Enspektos.com.  There’s much more information available at the Path of the Blue Eye Project.

Facebook's Maze of Privacy Settings Infographic

The NY Times just published this infographic tree that shows how complex the privacy settings on Facebook have become.  I’ve got to imagine that Facebook wants the PR credit for giving their users a lot of control over these settings, but then in reality they know that they are so complicated that hardly anyone will take the time figure them out.

It’s astonishing how much of your personal information becomes public if you don’t take the time to figure all of this out.

The ever-increasing complexity of the Facebook Privacy Policy is another example of how complicated the privacy issue is.  It’s a fine line that Facebook has to walk to utilize their members traffic for advertising and respecting their privacy.  It seems to me that advertising is winning.

Found on Fast Company