Cyber Times International Journal of Technology & Management

Facebook’s operating policies have given rise to a variety of ethical issues and risks to the users primarily bordering on their invasion of privacy. The risks include privacy of a user ranging from account hacking, chats with fake profile users, and misuse of any other kind of information. Additional risks are cyber-bullying, isolation from the ‘real’ and addiction to the ‘virtual’. Ethical issues include Facebook’s faulty privacy setting which pose issues for less educated user and the fact that Facebook can use any information of a user and becomes an owner of sorts of that information. This poses a special problem in developing countries, where Facebook is being increasingly used more as an e-Commerce site rather than a social networking platform. The problem is accentuated with the advent of mobile app, because that has increased the exposure of user to a much larger system amenable to a much larger and widespread abuse. The paper looks into a few future prospects that could help Facebook like, ‘Facebook-money’ and helping developing countries’ citizens and government to connect in the virtual world. Some recommendations are to take care of the risks at hand including mobile number verification at signing in, simple privacy settings etc. The paper concludes on the premise that Facebook and developing countries are both interdependent and a fruitful collaboration between the two will help in reaping huge benefits on each end.