Where everybody knows your name

Where everybody knows your name

Facebook changes privacy settings, alarming some users

By JOYCE HOOI

WHAT the large print giveth, the fine print taketh away. A change in Facebook privacy controls this week that purported to give its 350 million Facebook users more control over privacy settings appears to have backfired.

OUT IN THE OPEN
The most contentious issue of the controversy is the widening of what Facebook deems ‘publicly available information’
Some of the changes - including no longer having the option to hide your profile picture - have enraged users and digital rights groups.

Since Wednesday, as Facebook users were faced with a few seemingly easy decisions in a pop-up window informing them of the site’s privacy setting changes, the wider implications of the policy overhaul began to emerge.

The most contentious issue of the controversy is the widening of what Facebook deems ‘publicly available information’ (PAI) - information that Facebook users will now no longer be able to restrict access to.

Under the new privacy controls, a user’s name, profile photo, list of friends and pages the user is a friend of, gender, and networks the user belongs to are considered PAI.

A check by BT found that even after a user specifies that a profile picture be made visible to ‘only friends’, the profile picture remained visible in searches run on Facebook by other non-friend users.

Since the changes took effect, Facebook users have posted panicked comments like, ‘I cannot hide my profile picture any more. When I randomly clicked on profiles of friends of friends, I could see all of their profile pictures!’

Previously, it was possible to control the disclosure of everything but a user’s name and networks, according to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) dotRights website.

Electronic Frontier Foundation, a non-profit group, concluded: ‘These new ‘privacy’ changes are clearly intended to push Facebook users to publicly share even more information than before. Even worse, the changes will actually reduce the amount of control that users have over some of their personal data.’

Other people point out that in an era of where not much is a secret online anymore, Facebook’s changes are not any more intrusive.

‘When you look at what’s really visible, it’s not a whole lot. Assuming one isn’t a digital hermit, most of this information can be easily found in a Google search anyway,’ said Daryl Tay, a business analyst for marketing firm Blue Singapore.

A larger implication of the widening of PAI is that now, third-party applications will be able to access this information whenever a user’s friends add an application, even when the user himself does not.

‘The thing that alarms me most is the public data sharing with application developers. It will make me take a closer look at privacy settings,’ said Joo Zheng Chuan, a student at the National University of Singapore.

A more subtle but no less insidious change is the default and recommended privacy settings that new users will encounter.

According to a comparison run by the ACLU website, the default settings for most of a profile’s and wall’s elements have gone from ‘only friends’ to ‘everyone’.

Studies have shown that when presented with a default and an opt-out option, consumers rarely opt out, leaving the default in place.

Isaac Teo, 33, went to have a good hard look at his privacy settings after news of the controversy broke yesterday. ‘I think the onus is on yourself to make sure that your information’s secure,’ he said.

The affected settings run the gamut from a person’s relationship status to the gender of partner a user is interested in.

‘Facebook is nudging the settings toward the ‘disclose everything’ position. That’s not fair from the privacy perspective,’ said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center.

Even the sharing of a friend list might have far-ranging implications. A study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in September found that it was possible to predict whether a Facebook user was gay, simply by running his friends’ gender and sexuality through a software program.

Nothing personal, just business

This seemingly innocuous change in default settings might be part of a larger and ruthless business strategy that is taking shape for Facebook as it prepares for a showdown with Twitter.

‘Right now, most people don’t share their content using the ‘everyone’ option that Facebook introduced last summer. If Facebook pushes users to start using that, it could have a better stream of content to go against Twitter in the real-time search race,’ the TechCrunch website noted.

Fuelling mounting suspicion, this change was rolled out on the heels of announcements that Facebook had struck a deal with Microsoft to include Facebook status updates in Bing search engine results.

‘I think it shows what Facebook is. It doesn’t exist primarily to network people - it’s a business that networks people. So, business first,’ said Facebook user Kimberley Ong, 23.

According to web information company Alexa.com, Singapore is one of four countries globally in which Facebook is ranked the No 1 website. It has a 36 per cent penetration rate in Singapore per capita, compared to Australia and the United States at 35 per cent and 32 per cent, respectively.

Source : Business Times - 12 December 2009

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Suntec Reit raises $149m from placement

Suntec Reit raises $149m from placement

Aggregate leverage cut to 33.4% if all proceeds go towards debt repayment

By EMILYN YAP

SUNTEC Real Estate Investment Trust (Suntec Reit) yesterday raised net proceeds of about $149 million from a private placement to reduce debt, joining a host of other Reits that have made cash calls this year.

‘The proceeds from the private placement will strengthen Suntec Reit’s balance sheet and put us in a stronger position to take advantage of growth opportunities.’
- Yeo See Kiat (above), chief executive of Reit manager ARA Trust Management (Suntec)
Suntec Reit called for a trading halt in the morning to announce the launch of the private placement. The Reit manager said that book-building closed within three hours. Suntec Reit managed to place out 128.5 million new units at $1.19 apiece.

The issue price was a 6.5 per cent discount to the volume weighted average price of $1.2724 per unit, based on trades done on Thursday. The new units represent around 7.7 per cent of the number of units in issue on Thursday.

According to Suntec Reit, the private placement was more than five times oversubscribed by existing unitholders and new investors. More than 60 institutional investors bagged the new units.

Assuming that all net proceeds go towards debt repayment, its aggregate leverage is expected to fall from 36.2 per cent at Sept 30 to 33.4 per cent.

Presentation slides on the Reit’s third-quarter 2009 results show that it had total debt of $1.877 billion at Sept 30. No debt will mature in FY2010, but around $532.5 million will be due in FY2011.

‘The proceeds from the private placement will strengthen Suntec Reit’s balance sheet and put us in a stronger position to take advantage of growth opportunities,’ said Yeo See Kiat, chief executive of Reit manager ARA Trust Management (Suntec).

In a report on Wednesday, OCBC Investment Research flagged a potential dilution risk in the counter. ‘With declining office income and book value risk, Suntec could decide to go the acquisition route in 2010,’ said analyst Meenal Kumar. ‘It is likely to keep aggregate portfolio gearing unchanged or lower, necessitating a combination of both equity and debt financing on any purchase.’

DMG & Partners analyst Jonathan Ng believes that Suntec Reit is expecting potential asset write-downs at year-end, and is preparing to keep its gearing below 40 per cent.

‘We expect Suntec to register a 7 per cent devaluation on its book in Q4 2009 to $5 billion, from the current $5.4 billion,’ Mr Ng said in a note yesterday. ‘There are unlikely to be further cash calls unless further asset write-downs are expected in H2 2010.’

He estimates that there will be a ‘mild’ dilution of 1.2 per cent, or 0.11 cents per unit, to the Reit’s distribution per unit in FY 2010.

Suntec Reit units closed unchanged at $1.28 each yesterday after resuming trading in the afternoon.

Several Reits, such as Ascendas Reit and Fortune Reit, have raised funds from the stock market this year. Analysts expect more cash calls next year, as the sector continues to pare debt or build capacity for acquisitions.

Source : Business Times - 12 December 2009

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MINDY YONG

( +65 ) 91002985

mindy@mindyyong.com