from alalam.ir: Millions of Facebook users are reportedly abandoning the social media giant at an unprecedented rate over privacy concerns. 

New research shows Facebook has lost a total of 11 million users, nine
million in the US and two million in Britain. Researchers at the
University of Vienna analyzed 600 users and found they quit for reasons
like privacy concerns, general dissatisfaction, shallow conversations
and fear of becoming addicted.

 

Studies show the majority of users that quit the site were older males.

 

Facebook, among other tech giants, have been repeatedly under scrutiny
for their lack of user privacy, including turning over thousands of
user’s info to the government. In August, Infowars revealed Facebook submitted information on approximately 38,000 users in 74 countries
during the first half of 2013.

 

Over half of the requests originated from inside of the United States.
Tech giants are unable to reveal absolute numbers on how many requests
they’ve submitted to because the government prohibits them from doing
so. 

However, companies like Google, Microsoft, Facebook and Yahoo have
formed a unique alliance and are fighting back.

The tech alliance is putting pressure on the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance (FISA) court by filing motions asking to publicly disclose
more details about secret national intelligence requests, instead of
just releasing approximations.

“We
believe there is more information that the public deserves to know, and
that would help foster an informed debate about whether government
security programs adequately balance privacy interests when attempting
to keep the public safe,” said Facebook’s general counsel Colin Stretch.

“Editor of the journal Cyberpsychology, Behaviour and Social Networking
which published the findings, said: ‘Given high profile stories such as
WikiLeaks and the recent NSA surveillance reports, individual citizens
are becoming increasingly more wary of cyber-related privacy concerns,’” 
reported Mail Online.

 

Facebook has also been under close examination for their recently
updated “Statement of Rights and Responsibilities” policy which states
users’ profile data including their profile picture, name and personal
information “could show up as part of a Facebook ad their friends may
see on the site,” according to a report by Mashable News Agency.

 

Even more controversy surrounded the social media giant when they
announced the update of the “Tag Suggest” feature, which would allow
facial recognition technology “to speed up the process of ‘tagging’
friends and acquaintances who appear in photos posed on the network,”
reported Reuters.

 

As you can see, users’ concerns over privacy, or lack thereof, are
certainly substantiated. However, if your information isn’t being
collected through Facebook, NSA’s spy program, PRISM, is sure to scoop
up your info in some other way, most likely through email or cellular
data, the report said.