4 | NewScientist | 1 August 2009

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SUCCESSFUL social networking websites avoid promoting their privacy policy for fear of putting off potential members. As a result, people are sharing information online without caution – and without knowing how it is used.

So say Joseph Bonneau and Sören Preibusch at the University of Cambridge, who studied the privacy policies of 29 sites, including Facebook and MySpace. Although all sites possessed a privacy policy and many stressed the importance of privacy within their policy documentation, the pair found that only seven made their privacy policy prominent when soliciting users to sign up.

What’s more, although seven

of the sites had a privacy “seal” – an endorsement of good practice from an independent body – none reproduced it on their main sign-up page.

Just between us Bonneau and Preibusch’s analysis of traffic over a three-month period showed that sites that made their privacy policies prominent were growing at rates significantly lower than the others, on average. They argue that this demonstrates that successful networks avoid advertising their privacy policies, because users would become reluctant to sign up and share information with other users and the site itself .

“Even sites with good privacy feel that they can’t promote it, so users have no idea of what they’re getting,” says Bonneau.

Ape airlift is off

SOMETIMES you just can’t win. Anglo-Australian mining giant BHP Billiton was accused of hypocrisy when it announced plans to airlift 48 orang-utans into a new wildlife reserve in Indonesian Borneo, as it was simultaneously preparing to destroy the apes’ habitat not far away with its Maruwai coal-mining project.

Now, two years on, it is coming under fire again in stories carrying headlines along the lines of “Hope of freedom for orang-

utans dashed”. True, BHP is abandoning the airlift – but that’s because it is pulling out of the mining project too, citing a dramatic fall in world coal prices in the past year.

Whether that is good news for the orang-utans remains an open question. The fear among environmental groups is that loggers, palm oil farmers and possibly other mining companies will move in on the forest vacated by BHP. Without the alternative accommodation previously offered by BHP, the orang-utans will once more be vulnerable.

Killing them softly

THE kindest way to kill a mouse is a sharp blow to the skull. In contrast, the classic spring-loaded mousetraps can be cruel, says a report from the UK’s Universities Federation for Animal Welfare , because they don’t always kill instantly. A study of US snap-traps showed in 2003 that rates of snagging just a tail or a leg ranged from 4 to 57 per cent. Poisoning or drowning suffer limitations too.

The federation laments that

–”Quality care” at Guantanamo–

–Do you feel lucky, punk?–

Detainee panel slammedDOCTORS who assist in the force-

feeding of hunger-striking detainees

at Guantanamo Bay were accused last

week of acting unethically, despite a

government review that concluded

prisoners are well cared for .

Force-feeding has been used to

combat hunger strikes by detainees

at the US base since 2005 , when over

80 inmates staged the first such

protest. Hundreds of strikers have

been put in restraint chairs, which

have binds for ankles, wrists and

shoulders, together with a lap belt

and head restraint. They are then fed

through a tube inserted into their nose.

Those actions constitute

“humiliating and degrading

treatment”, which is outlawed by the

Geneva conventions, argue Leonard

Rubenstein of the US Institute of

Peace in Washington DC and George

Annas of Boston University, who

co-authored an article on the issue ,

published last week in The Lancet

(vol 374, p 353).

Human rights activists had

hoped President Barack Obama

might halt what they claim to be

abuses at the base, but a panel

commissioned by Obama concluded

in February that the detainees

received a “high quality of care”

and that Geneva conventions were

not being breached. The panel was

led by US admiral Patrick Walsh, vice

chief of naval operations.

However, Annas points out

that the panel did not include any

independent study of individual

inmates’ physical or mental health.

“This is the main problem,” he says.

“Social networking sites that promote their privacy policies grow more slowly than their competitors”

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