Evaluating Privacy Practices in Web 2.0 Services

This paper discusses the effectiveness of privacy practices and tools employed by Web 2.0 service providers to facilitate users protect their privacy and respond to public pressure. By experimenting on three recently introduced tools, which claim to offer users access and choice on the data stored about them, we analyse their privacy preserving features. Research results indicate their limited effectiveness with regard to user privacy. We discuss discrepancy between stated goals of these privacy enhancing tools and actual goals these tools accomplish.