Hibe and the EFF Bill of Rights for Social Network Users

Following the privacy controversy that rocked the social media world in May, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) published a bill for privacy rights for social network users.

In this post, we will go through the bill and discuss how Hibe complies with it.

#1: The Right to Informed Decision-Making

“Users should have the right to a clear user interface that allows them to make informed choices about who sees their data and how it is used.”

Hibe: Privacy made simple

As seen in a previous post, Hibe enables you to share information through facets. In a single view, you can review who can see your facets and which booklets you expose in them.

If you set access restrictions (conditions) to one of your facets, it will appear on the same interface.

Because Hibe supports exceptions of various natures, such as “Tom can always access my project booklet”, or “Dad can never see content in my Friend facet”, we have designed a privacy page to summarize all of them in a single interface.

“Users should be able to see readily who is entitled to access any particular piece of information about them, including other people, government officials, websites, applications, advertisers and advertising networks and services.”

Hibe is offering a simple model. You house your information in a place where you have total control on who can access it. There are no advertisers or so-called “partners” to leech your information.

We just do not grant access to your information to anyone unless you specify it or we are required to do so by law.

“Whenever possible, a social network service should give users notice when the government or a private party uses legal or administrative processes to seek information about them, so that users have a meaningful opportunity to respond.”

We believe that letting you know who accesses your information is part of your right for privacy. If we become under legal obligation to share some of your information, we will notify you unless we are refrained from doing so.

#2: The Right to Control

YOU do the sharing, not us.

“Social network services must ensure that users retain control over the use and disclosure of their data.”

This is our “raison d’être”. We design Hibe to give you full control over who accesses what and under which conditions.

You do the sharing, not us.

“Social network services must ask their users' permission before making any change that could share new data about users, share users' data with new categories of people, or use that data in a new way. Changes like this should be "opt-in" by default, not "opt-out," meaning that users' data is not shared unless a user makes an informed decision to share it.”

We also believe that too often default values (and opt outs) are used to manipulate people’s behavior.  On Hibe, you define the sharing rules of your facets. No services or features can modify these rules.  Hibe is about giving you the control; not taking it away.

“If a social network service is adding some functionality that its users really want, then it should not have to resort to unclear or misleading interfaces to get people to use it.”

Our business model is not based on your data. It is based on our ability to provide you with total control over the sharing of your information. Misleading or unclear interfaces brings us no value.

#3: The Right to Leave

“One of the most basic ways that users can protect their privacy is by leaving a social network service that does not sufficiently protect it. Therefore, a user should have the right to delete data or her entire account from a social network service. And we mean really delete. It is not enough for a service to disable access to data while continuing to store or use it. It should be permanently eliminated from the service's servers.”

Your trust means more to us than your data.  Any information shared through your facets, be it a post or an image will be permanently deleted from our servers on your request.

If you contribute content to a public environment, such as a group, you can no longer delete it as others may interact with it.  Similarly, when you contribute art to a public organization, you can not ask for it back. However, if you cancel your account, Hibe will permanently anonymize the contributed content.

Further information on deletion including delays and policy infringement will be found in our terms of use and privacy policy at launch time.

“Furthermore, if users decide to leave a social network service, they should be able to easily, efficiently and freely take their uploaded information away from that service and move it to a different one in a usable format.”

We are currently working on a technology that will enable our users to maintain their information even when offline. This inherently means that you can keep your content even after you deactivate or cancel your Hibe account.

All in all

We started Hibe because we respect our social lives and want to improve it online. When we see initiatives promoting awareness on privacy issues and how to make better use of our social tools, it keeps us moving.

Hibe is for you.

original image by futureofprivacy.org