Internet phenomenon Facebook could soon be given more than a poke by a Fife graduate who is developing a rival social networking website.
Benjamin Birt came up with PeerBook as he was concerned about the lack of privacy on sites like Facebook and MySpace.
As a St Andrews University computer science student, he wrote software which guarantees to protect users’ personal information and he is preparing to launch the result.
Since Facebook was set up in 2004 in Harvard, it has attracted over 400 million users and earned its inventor Mark Zuckerberg and his colleagues billions.
However, concerns have been growing about the way such sites collect, store and in some cases pass on the personal information of users to advertisers and third parties.
Benjamin, who graduated this week, said, “Facebook and other social networks are growing in popularity by the day.
“However there are serious privacy and data control concerns with these social networking services.
“Since virtually none of them are centrally-located inside the EU they are subject to little or no data protection legislation and as such can legally sell their customers’ data to third party organisations.”
A group of US students have launched a web campaign for funding and building an alternative networking service called Diaspora, although they have yet to write the program.
Benjamin is several steps ahead, having built a prototype of PeerBook in St Andrews, proved it works and had its security robustly tested.
He said, “PeerBook does what Facebook can’t.
“Firstly, there’s no central control of users’ data.
“Personal information stays personal and is only shared with people whom the user wants to contact.
“Secondly, when personal information is sent from one friend to another the data is encrypted using a complex set of encryption standards.
“It can only be read by PeerBook users.”
Benjamin reckons there is a market for a more secure social networking site and intends to spend his summer refining and testing his software before making it available free on the web.
He said, “Tightening up the security of personal data on the web can only make social networking a safer experience for everyone, and there is growing evidence that this is what the public wants.”