May 24, 2010

  • Facebook Privacy and Why You Should Care

    There has been a lot of fuss lately over Facebook.  With over 500 million active users I am sure many of you on Xanga are also on Facebook.  you may or may not be aware of the recent changes to the privacy policy that Facebook has and even if you are aware you may not care.  I want to take the time to explain why you should.

    Facebook started out as a closed system that was limited and private.  You couldn't even sign up without a College E-mail address (anything ending in .edu) which made it ideal for college students everywhere.  However as time has gone on Facebook as gone back on that notion and made it more open than anyone would have ever imagined.  Think about all the third parties that are looking for you to use "Facebook Connect" to register for their site.  It isn't to make registering for a site easy so much as it is for them to grab a lot of useful information about you and all your friends. 

    That's right the problem really lies in that even if you never share your Facebook with out sites, and never play the goofy games like Farmville or Mafia Wars your friends could be selling your information out.

    Those are all the things that your friends can shared about you.  I know it's not a good image but this is the text on that page.

    "When your friend visits a Facebook Platform application or website, they may want to share certain information to make the experience more social. For example, a greeting card application may use your birthday information to prompt your friend to send a card.

    If your friend uses an application or website that you do not use, you can control certain types of information the application can access. Please note that applications will be able to access your Name, Profile Picture, Gender, as well as any information that is visible to Everyone. They will also be able to access your Connections, except the Connections noted with an asterisk below. In those cases, although the information is considered a Connection, you can control whether an application can access it."

    With all the choices on settings and controls this is easy to miss but a big deal.  It can share a lot of personal information about you without your permission.  Are you careful about the friends you keep on Facebook?  I know for myself I am not very choosy so I turn all of those settings off.   This is just one area though so how can you make sure that your privacy and personal information is safe on Facebook?  There are a few things that you can do.

    1) Treat it like a public space that everyone can see.  I mean EVERYONE.  If you think your pastor/priest, mom or dad, or boss would be offended by what you have on there THEN GET RID OF IT!  Seriously think about what you put on there.

    2) There are tools to help make it more private for you.  CNN had these listed:

    "ReclaimPrivacy, a donation-based project, recently launched a tool that scans your Facebook page’s privacy settings. It alerts users when their privacy settings have defaulted to public.

    SaveFace, which is free to install, automatically sets users’ settings - contact information, search settings, friends, tags, connections, personal information and posts - to “friends only.”

    TinEye is not specifically for privacy conscious Facebook users. However, the reverse image search engine can be useful when looking to see if an image posted on Facebook has made its way across the Web. Simply upload a photo and let TineEye search the Web to see if the image has been used elsewhere.

    Finally, there's OpenBook (warning: potentially offensive language), a site that doesn't exactly help you manage your Facebook privacy settings, but it might scare you into wanting to keep your info private. The site lets you search through public status updates. Some really embarrassing stuff shows up."

    I found ReclaimPrivacy to be the best.  Check out OpenBook to see just how bad Facebook can be if your not careful.  There is plenty of private information that is easily found.  It's scary.

    So be careful out there kids.  Be safe about what you post.  I personally love that Xanga gives me the option to make my blog friends only to control what gets out there.  I choose not to use that but I love the option.