A social networking site (SNS) is a website where people create a profile and become a user to interact with other users. Some of the features of SNS include sending and receiving instant messages, scraps, photos and videos. Most SNS's have a common feature of creating user groups and being a member of a particular user group. Examples of the most illustrious SNS's include Facebook, Orkut, and LinkedIn. These websites give people the power to share their ideas and interests and make the users more open and connected. Users often complain of privacy issues related to SNS as these sites run their business at the cost of the user's personal information. The characteristics of SNS which put the users at risk are lack of notice to users about changes in the privacy policy, sale of personal user information to advertisers and no option to delete an account.

             The online social networks have a common practice of not informing its users about the changes to the company's privacy policy. Any website is a type of business created with the aim to earn profits in the same way the social networking websites are made to gain profits. The majority of these profits come in the form of advertising. For example, Google Inc. is a company which was formed in 1998 as a search engine. As the company grew each year, it has transformed itself into a parent company by adding a lot of subsidiaries. Now the company is an email service provider, a map navigator with its Google maps feature, and an advertising company with Google Adsense feature, where advertisers target ads based on location and particular age of the audience. Orkut is a social networking website, which is also a subsidiary of Google Inc. It targets mainly youngsters to promote and sell products which are related to adolescents. As and when a new subsidiary is added to the company, the company should inform the users about the changes to its privacy policy.