Slashdot Mirror
Facebook Masks Worse Privacy With New Interface
An anonymous reader writes "Facebook launched new privacy settings this week. Cosmetically, this means that the settings are explained more clearly and are marginally easier to manage. Unfortunately, some of the most significant changes actually make preserving privacy harder for its users: profile elements that could previously be restricted to 'Only Friends' are now designated as irrevocably publicly available: 'Publicly available information includes your name, profile picture, gender, current city, networks, friend list, and Pages.' Where you could previously preserve the privacy of this information and remain publicly searchable only by name, Facebook now forces you to either give up this information (including your current city!) to anyone with a Facebook account, or to restrict your search visibility — which of course limits the usefulness of the site far beyond how not publicly sharing your profile picture would. That Facebook made this change while simultaneously rolling out major changes to the privacy settings interface seems disingenuous."
I guess it depends on what you want to use this for. Me, I want more attention, so it's all good.
... now back to the bit mines.
I know it's a different company, but what did the CEO of Google say? 'If You Have Something You Don't Want Anyone To Know, Maybe You Shouldn't Be Doing It'. I see Facebook has the same attitude.
Wash me but don't make me wet. If you're concerned about your privacy, you should not be using social networking web sites. Any information you put into these services will leak one way or another, regardless of "privacy settings".
It seems to me that when you sign up for a social networking site like facebook any of the information you give them is going to be well.. socially networked.
If you don't want your name, address, phone, measurements, work history and other info made available for the whole world to see, DON'T POST IT.
It's odd that anyone wanting privacy would be using a social networking tool when that is precisely what the tool was not designed to do.
boycott slashdot February 10th - 17th check out: altSlashdot.org
Oh, that Facebook notified all users of the change and clearly explained it in advance? Is that what's being cried about here? Ok, I get that then. Carry on.
Yes, tell that to the hundreds of millions of users who are already using it and may have just had their privacy exposed. Good plan.
What's really so terrible with someone knowing that you live in some city. It's not as it's hard to find out anyway.
If you don't want anyone to know anything about you; don't share it online!
If someone requests to add me to their friend list before, they could hide virtually all the information about themselves from me besides a name which may sound familiar. A curious person may add this person to their friends list because they don't know whether they know the person or not, thus divulging all their information to the party. At least now they'd have to make a profile that put them in a reasonable city and attract friends I know. I could check if they have thousands of friends world wide and probably don't actually know me before I give up my privacy to them.
The information which is forced public is adequate for identifying a person you might know without including more sensitive information like addresses, email addresses, and messages or photographs (besides the profile picture)
.
Facebook does not care about the privacy of its users. Get used to it.
It was an eye-opener for me when I realized that television networks are not in the business of putting out quality programming and paying for it with advertising, they're in the business of selling advertising and the programs are the means of attracting enough eyeballs to give that ad time value. "If they can come up with something cheaper than news magazines, comedies and dramas, they'll air it." And sure enough, there's now channels out there specializing in repackaging what are effectively Youtube videos into half hour shows complete with the requisite commercial breaks. You have your police chases, animal attacks, painful stunts, and cute animals. Whatever it takes to keep you fuckers watching until the next commercial break.
So, Facebook's mission isn't to provide a friendly place for friendly people to connect and gee, they just want to make enough money to keep the doors open and break even. I haven't made a thorough exploration of Facebook's business model but it's gotta be something related to selling PI or allowing marketing firms to conduct real world research. I know that stupid farm game gets people to spend real world money on virtual assets. I don't know how much of a rent Facebook charges them for operating on their app.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
I'm glad I don't have a faceplant account. If I did, I would have told it my city and put a picture and all that on it and had it restricted to friends and it would now apparently be exposed. I don't tell random people on the internet what city I live in. I'll usually go as far as what state in the US I am in (it's a big one), but I don't want people knowing where I am unless they actually already know me. This sounds like a bad move.
Limits socializing, who knew? Seriously though, I have some friends from highschool that I wouldn't mind getting back in contact with and tried to look up on facebook. But with a common name like Mike Smith and no profile picture or friend information how are you supposed to find people? Maybe these people don't want to be found but that seems to be odd seeing as you have a Facebook profile. If you only want to have contact with people you are already in contact with something else would work, eg. email, Facebook IMHO is meant to help people find people they've lost contact with. This is impossible with too much privacy on the site.
When user's stage a revolt, much like this Slashdot posting is doing, they typically listen to the users and make some changes. All it takes a group or two with a few hundred thousand users (the site has 350 million) and they take notice.
My only complain would be if Facebook listed me in the search engine results, which they currently allow me to disallow this. The reason being is I prefer my person website to rank 1st in Google over all these other sites I'm on.
"During My Service In The United States Congress, I Took The Initiative In Creating The Internet." -Al Gore
While I realize that the best way to preserve your privacy online is to not sign up for sites like Facebook, the fact remains that Facebook appears to be intent on being free and loose with people's details despite constant pressure to allow people to control access to that information. Each time they "fix" their privacy issues, they just shift it to another aspect. They aren't really changing anything - they're just moving things around. Until they get a massive smackdown that makes them realize it's not profitable to keep up this shell game with their user's private information, they will continue just moving things around, making "this" thing private while making "that" thing available to the public.
But, like I said, if it's really a massive concern, just don't sign up for a Facebook account...
So cancel your account, wise guy. Jeez, people are stupid.
I do not appreciate Facebook bringing privacy settings to the attention of a certain woman who I may or may not have been cyber-stalking for the past 10 years, causing her to change her settings and making her profile no longer visible to me.
I say that in the least creepy way possible.
Yes, but you'd be canceling it now, after the data was exposed to begin with.
Likewise, when sites ask for security questions such as pet's name, there's no obligation to give a truthful answer: just one that you will consistently give to that site when asked that question. It's the internet - you're not even a number here.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Every day, facebook becomes worse and worse. The apps are pointless, and the site is slower and cumbersome (compared to its spritely version in 2004 when it came out). It is fun to be tagged in photos with your friends, and to post on each others' "walls", but that's about it. During college it was great to use, since everyone is growing up and want to meet new people. However, after college theres not as much use for it and I find myself barely using it.. its basically functioning as a "bridge" between when you just meet someone, to when you get their IM and you chat on IM instead.
The only thing keeping facebook going is that its achieved critical mass. I can see Google one day knocking out Facebook easily, since everyone now has gmail and eventually Facebook will need to move from "stupid, 3rd party, spyware apps" to real apps such as Calendars, maps, and such -- and google already has these features.
Zuckerberg should have sold for $750 million or whatever was offered.
I think Facebook is being on the up-and-up on this.
When I logged yesterday there was a big modal dialog box (thickbox?) giving choices.
The defaults were to keep stuff private.
Yeah, but people have to *know* about it before they can choose to not use it, right?
And don't worry, I've stopped whining to my mama about internet trolls many years ago.
see a Text Widget
I understand your sentiment: social web services like Facebook are about sharing information, if that's not what you want to do, don't use them. On the other hand, less tech-savvy folks are not always so keenly aware of the implications of such privacy issues.
Slashdot is not a game, Slashdot is not a game. Crap, I just lost points.
You say that as though cancelling your account might somehow lead to your personal information being purged from Facebook's database and your photos removed from their web servers. Where did you get that idea from?
Indeed.
they just want to make enough money to keep the doors open and break even.
No. They're going to do an IPO and the principals are doing everything they to make sure they become instant billionaires at the IPO.
As for you Facebook users, there's a KY sale at Walmart - stock up.
feces book hysteria... duh'... no thanks, not for me.
Your friends list can be hidden from strangers, it's just not in the privacy settings.
You have to go to your profile page, then click the pencil icon in the upper right corner of the friends box. Uncheck 'show my friends in my profile'.
It will still show your friends to your other friends, though.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
It appears people still don't understand that Facebook is a company and a BUSINESS. Not a government institute, not a public service. Making money is their sole purpose. Anything else they do is just a means to make that money. People seem to think they can have some expectation of privacy from Facebook when their primary business model is advertising revenues. The way to make the advertising most effective is to base it on your information. Why should they care who you want to see it or what you want done with it? I'd say you're lucky they aren't selling your personal information en masse to advertisers, and they very well may be. If you put your information on Facebook, you should be aware that you are forfeiting all rights to it and you have no right to demand it be private. The people who complain about Facebook not having enough privacy are the same people who complain about Google knowing your search history. It's time to grow up now, this is how the world works.
"A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything." ~Friedrich Nietzsche
so you can't hide your city anymore...carmen sandiego is FUCKED
Wrong answer, bright boy. DO NOT just delete an account, if you're concerned about privacy. The data remains on the server when you delete.
EDIT your account details FIRST. Change your name to Mickey Mouse, your address to something preposterous like 99999 Lost Highway, Bumfuck, Egypt. Change ALL your details, so that existing data is overwritten. Don't forget anything. Break contact with all your friends, unsubscribe to groups, replace your photo(s) with landscapes of the moon. Use your imagination. Really fuck up the account. Then, leave it ACTIVE long enough for several server backups to take place. Finally - delete the account.
Use your little peabrain for something besides playing pocket pool.......
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Facebook, Twitter and other "social networking" sites are nothing but poorly disguised data mining enterprises at best. Privacy? What privacy!? There never was any privacy on these sites to begin with. Every bit of data you give them is sold to whoever will pay for it.
Guess what, if you cancel now and someone searches you tomorrow, THEY WON'T SEE YOU.
I see a lot of comments here stating that if you don't like it, don't use it.
The crux of the problem is that facebook did not tell users that the access controls changed. Information that was previously had a setting to restrict access to your friends just disappeared
The whole problem is that people didn't know about it to decide that they didn't like it.
Would you be fine if this was a firewall product that suddenly chose to ignore your rules to block low ports in an undocumented change to the access controls, even though it says that it is now advertised as stronger protection than it was before? Of course not, and just saying that "if you don't like it, don't use it" won't fix the problem. We need companies to operate at a higher standard than this.
I use facebook. When someone who isn't one of my friends looks at my profile, they see:
1) My name. Why else would they be looking at my profile?
2) My user photo. This isn't actually me, so I don't care. I didn't want my face up there, so I didn't put a picture of myself in.
3) My website -- actually just my flickr page, since I don't care if people find it. It's not like it has any more information about me.
4) My education and work listings. Again.. I left those up on the grounds that it would make it easier for people to find me, and I don't care if people see them.
So... where's the risk in those? No one can see my current address, because I don't see a need for it. If someone wants to know where I live, they can ask me. If someone wants to know my IM name, they can ask. It's not hard... they can still send me a message, even without declaring themselves my friend. Sure, if I'd filled out every piece of information and it was being shared, I'd be upset. But really... you don't have to fill any of it out that you don't want to, and anything you fill out on a site like FB should be considered to be public anyway.
There is a stupid loophole that still exists where one of your friends can use an app which can access just about any kind of information about you and give it to a 3rd party without you knowing about it. Even if you make a customized setting where certain friends don't get to know certain kinds of information about you, a Facebook app could bypass your own setting and get that information ignoring your "friends" privacy settings.
So remember to go to your privacy settings, then "Applications and Websites", then "What your friends can share about you" and uncheck whatever you don't want strangers to know about you.
Wrong. That data is still right there in Archive.org's WayBack Machine. Ditto in Google cache, Bing cache, and anywhere else that might have scraped Facebook's pages since then.
Lots of luck there, tough guy.
@Mindless Drivel: 100% of Twitter posts ever Tweeted.
If I understand correctly, before this change this information was already accessible not only to any apps you used but any apps that your friends used. Those apps could do whatever they like with it and you don't have any control over what apps your friends use. Also much of it was available to anyone who happened to want to serve an ad on your page.
By designating it as irredeemably public, they're not making privacy worse, they're just admitting what was already true.
I wish they didn't include friends list and pages in the must-be-public information, but I'd rather this approach than having it be ACTUALLY public (because any app can access it) while allowing you to set a setting making it "private" that didn't actually do anything to really make it so.
Better suggestion: Use fakenamegenerator and come up with something that doesn’t look like an obviously bogus profile.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
well maybe i should STOP USING CAPS and think before i type/troll. WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT THAT? nigger
Not quite.
I cancelled my facebook account around 2 months ago, and there was a two week delay before they actually deleted my profile.
Google had some stuff cached for a few weeks more.
It is expected. Privacy does not work well with any social networking website. If you get on to a social networking website, they want you to make friends, more friends than you normally have. The more you network, the more they make money out of it. Its like the stock market, they dont like money at one place. It needs to keep rolling. The trick to maintaining social networking websites is how little privacy can you maintain while keeping the website relatively safe and secure for users and increase opportunities for people to network. And they can do this only by exposing as much information about people as possible.
I was able to keep everything the way it was. I don't know about you but when I went to the privacy controls I had more options including to keeping everything to Only Friends. I think the new controls are well done. I do think that the wizard they had is a bit confusing but I was able to lock everything down from the privacy settings. I think this article may be wrong.
Changing my privacy settings reminded me to double check my Application privacy settings. Is it just me being unobservant, or has the "Do not share any information about me through the Facebook API" option been stealthily removed?
Yes, precisely. Especially considering that FB needs to explicitly approve name changes. I went through the process once, and it was 3 days before they cleared it and my new name showed up.
Reply to That ||
Of course, it's a "social network", not a "privacy network", but that said, this is the usual, "We're big now, have the lawyers to prove it, and will dictate our own terms." What about the MBA-sanctioned, proprietary business model don't you get? In a world where Monsanto can successfully sue a farmer, out of business, for patent infringement when their pollen drifts into his field, what do you expect?
Only if your profile was publicly searchable. There is an option to make it so that search engines can’t find you. Only logged in users can find my profile.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
I'm not one of those people super concerned about privacy, but I actually went into Facebook a while back and turned most stuff to Friend or at least Friend of a Friend. No, you can't see my political or religious views, or posts by friends on my wall, unless you're at least a foaf.
And, yes, I'm smart enough to expose enough information that you can actually identify me in search results.
And then Facebook, the other day, actually prompted me with a popup page. All well and good, except everything had two options (Instead of the actual three settings each privacy option has), with some of them not letting me set the option as strict as I already had it. Only people I've friended can see or comment on my wall, damnit.
I had to go back into the privacy settings and reset to where I had it. I don't remember which ones, when I realized the screen didn't let me do everything, I just went with the defaults and immediately leaped over to the actual privacy page.
It's very poor planning on the part of Facebook. It's a great idea to actually throw privacy settings in people's faces and recommend stricter settings, and presumably new accounts will have those by default. But they could have bothered to think 'Hey, what if guy already set his privacy settings?'
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
This is a good thing. It's just facebook explicitly letting it be known what has always been true: That information is NOT private and never has been. The way facebook apps work ensures that there is no privacy regarding those details. Admitting such is just honesty.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
Actually FB makes a clear distinction between disactivation of your account (they keep the data and just hide it from other users) and deletion (a feature they have been forced to introduce recently). You can always suspect they actually keep the data but no proof exists that they do so.
On the other hand, I guess a "quiet" account (someone who would not post a lot of info, and who would log every month only for example) must not be worth a lot for them. They live on the stats provided by the analysis of what you say and do.
I this on Facebook, and I can NOT confirm these claims. Nothing prevents me from setting the Search result privacy setting to "everyone" while setting my "About Me" privacy setting to "Friends Only", for example
He who laughs last, thinks slowest.
Click the little Change Settings button on the top of the page. Nothing is "irrevocably public" I have all my info other than send friend request set to "Friends Only". Users aren't so stupid, the submitter and editor seem to be though. This hyperbole crap is spreading across the web today/yesterday and those spreading it don't care to investigate the issue far enough to get anything resembling the truth.
Jeez I'm glad I look at things for myself...
My Babylon
Worse than that, the pop-up menu option for more privacy was not listed as "keep private", it was listed as "old settings". If you hovered over the "old setting" button a menu did pop up that said "private" or something like that, but clearly the menu was designed to entice users to reveal more private information.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
Or just leave it active and forget about it. I think it's clear that deleting the account doesn't protect or purge your data. There's no reason to guess how long is "long enough for several server backups". Just remove all your info, replace what you can with bogus info, and let the account sleep.
I don't think most people realize that friends of friends of friends etc can see status messages or What's on your Mind posts? And to all those people who post the incriminating pictures I pity the fools. There is no such thing as privacy.
http://www.abox.org
Avery Howell
I'm sorry. I just went to my facebook account and got the popup for the new settings. There were what, 10 settings to choose? Sure the defaults were as open as possible, but is it so f'ing difficult to click 10 times and hit save? And I don't see what they are talking about either. I can still set all my settings to friends only or friends of friends, or everyone. It took me all of 1 minute to answer the pop up questions. Another minute digging into the privacy screens show nothing out of the ordinary.
I think I was one of the last people on the planet to sign up for Facebook.
I figured, "I already keep in touch with everyone I want to keep in touch with". Oh, BTW, I've been out of college for 20 years.
But then I signed up. And you know what? There are lots of people I have lost track of over the years that I found on Facebook. It's fun to see their pictures, see how they have aged, and see their families. It's fun to read what amounts to peoples' diaries and see what is going on in their lives.
It's also a great way to post pictures of my family so that my friends and family can see them without me having to email them to whoever wants them.
Now I agree that all the apps suck. I have absolutely ZERO interest in what games people are playing, and I do not want to be notified that they just scored 10 points in "Sparkle" or whatever game it is they are playing. I have pretty much succeeded in blocking all the currently in-vogue apps, but I wish there was a setting that I could click to jut block ALL apps by default.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
I see a privacy option(before the change) of "friends of friends". can someone clarify it? Does this mean if I'm A, and I'm friends with B, and B is friends with C, C can see mine(A's) stuff? Or does it go deeper in the degrees of separation? Need to clarify.
Wrong answer, bright boy. DO NOT just delete an account, if you're concerned about privacy. The data remains on the server when you delete.
EDIT your account details FIRST. Change your name to Mickey Mouse, your address to something preposterous like 99999 Lost Highway, Bumfuck, Egypt. Change ALL your details, so that existing data is overwritten. Don't forget anything. Break contact with all your friends, unsubscribe to groups, replace your photo(s) with landscapes of the moon. Use your imagination. Really fuck up the account. Then, leave it ACTIVE long enough for several server backups to take place. Finally - delete the account.
Use your little peabrain for something besides playing pocket pool.......
...people use their real names & details TO SIGN UP for online stuff? Wow. We sure have lost some institutional paranoia.
...if they're your friends, you should've told them your fake name by other means.
Now, I know some of you will say, "BUT HOW CAN MAH FRIENDS FIND ME???"
Populus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur...
"Force shits upon Reason's back." - Poor Richard's Almanac
I don't mind sharing information, but I want to control what information is seen by whom. When I signed up and agreed to the original terms, they didn't share all of that info. So now my choice is let them change the original agreement, or not use the service anymore. I don't really like either choice, and think there should be more choices. Luckily I am not using my real name, and keep most real world details to a minimum anyways. But I still would like more options when it comes to sharing my information.
"But this one goes to 11!"
I work in the IT department of an HR & headhunting firm. Sites like facebook, netlog, etc have become real goldmines of information to separate the dumbasses from the decent candidates. You can tell a lot from a profile, pictures and who are in the friends list.
I myself extremely value my privacy and will never post anything on any network site other than professional network sites like LinkedIn (and even then, my BIO will be limited). It doesn't help that my father used to be in direct marketing ages ago. Even back then, direct marketing databases contained more combined and linked information about people than the friggin' government had... I can only imagine what it has become now.
Notice the link is now broken? Here's the way it now works:
Company asshole #1: Let's put up a forum where customers can discuss our product.
Company asshole #2: It's working great, they're discussing our product!
Company asshole #1: Hey, they're saying some bad things! Let's pull down those postings.
And if you setup your own website to discuss their product, they hit you with a DCMA take-down because you mentioned their name which is a trademark you can't use.
Fuck facebook. Not for privacy bullshit, but rather for just being dicks.
Better suggestion: Use fakenamegenerator and come up with something that doesn’t look like an obviously bogus profile.
HSRfakenamegenerator:
All my friends that complain about their jobs/bosses on their FB accounts are going to be rather unhappy about this turn of events.
Wrong answer, bright boy. DO NOT just delete an account, if you're concerned about privacy. The data remains on the server when you delete.
EDIT your account details FIRST. Change your name to Mickey Mouse, your address to something preposterous like 99999 Lost Highway, Bumfuck, Egypt.
Thanks for releasing my details, jerk.
I was presented with two choices; Public (recommended) and to keep the current settings. I like the way my settings were, so I kept them. I'm looking at the privacy page right now and the ONLY difference that I can see is it wants a password to access the privacy settings. Everything underneath is exactly the same way it was before they made their changes, which BTW are Everyone for adding me & my location with everything else locked down to "Only Friends". If something's changed under there, I can't see it.
Now, it's pretty sneaky of them to call it a change and put up a big screen with just a few choices that are defaulted to Everybody. Still, I don't see where it's irrevocable; surely they learned something from the Beacon fiasco.
I am Homer of Borg, resistance is - Ooo Donuts!
This is Facebook. A site which has had privacy problems more or less since its inception - mainly because the idea that sure, there might be things you want to share - just not with the whole world, okay? - was never (and indeed AFAICT is still not) part of the original design philosophy.
Anyone who has actually attempted to use Facebook's privacy settings for more than about 5 minutes should have already figured that out. Treat it (and indeed any similar site) like a dodgy pub with incredible acoustics full of big hairy neanderthals you don't like and gossips who can't keep their mouth shut and you won't go too far wrong.
Treat it like a private room in which you can share your innermost thoughts with your closest friends in complete safety and you are going to come unstuck sooner rather than later.
Huh? I was referring to fakenamegenerator.com.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Who knew that a social website like facebook (and the quietly lurking but previously loud) and myspace would garner sooo much attention? I mean come on, you have to wonder what our society is coming to that something like this would even be a blip on the radar of caring... BUT, since we are now taking life direction from sites like this and privacy concerns, I am building a fortress of solitude that each of my friends and family can see through with special glasses, and none of you can see what I am doing. There, rant for the day, on a techno-social-rant-news-thingie website. MKilpatric (6 ft 2) (Male) (Kansas) (Brown Hair, Blue Eyes) (Google me!) Heh heh.
mkilpatric, to all the mysterious people, I am the folded dollar.
Just bookmarked fakenamegenerator ... Priceless!
Its a pain but you can b*tch at their customer support and get your profile expunged from their servers. It was a pain but I did it once in the past. Now I keep my profile limited to Name, City, Company, and networks. No personal details at all in my profile.
Bryan
With the new privacy controls added in, it seems a feature that would have now been useful for this change is now gone. and thats the ability to view your Wall as one of your friends. Since you can now restrict posts to groups, it would be nice to have this feature to see what all information each group is seeing. You still have the ability to view your information as one of your friends, but they removed the wall tab.
I find it interesting that for each level of security you must enter your password again, "For Better Security." Does anyone else see this as a blatant way of facebook trying to further the illusion of privacy? There is no point to putting in a password except for the act of putting in a password, which makes users feel more secure.
Seriously. I just went through the settings, and you're able to lock all of it, down to what your friends' apps can share. If that STILL doesn't satisfy you, then delete your Facebook account - that will be the end. What data you've shared is already out on the Internet, but you can prevent more.
If they have a decent transactional database, they'd be keeping a record of everything that happened. And I don't mean a database transaction log, but an actual row in some table that contains your previous data and when it was changed.
Information wants to be free. Isn't that a common meme around here? You can't take back what you've let out. If you want privacy, you have to be very selective about what you let out and to whom.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
This only makes the "privacy help" message they give you when you want to unsuscribe (I'm sorry that's "disable" which doesn't do shit) more hypocrite.
I'd like to see people disabling their accounts en mass claiming privacy concerns, not going to happen I know. Some times I hate the world.
Fuck facebook, and more than anything, fuck facebook users and their habit to post pictures of non users.
But... the future refused to change.
So I wonder what Canada's Privacy Commissioner will have to say about these changes now?
Unless archive.org has a facebook account that friended me, there is no way for it to get info of mine that was never exposed. Same with google cache. Most of the internet is still unindexed, contrary to popular belief. Anything behind a login is generally not indexed by bots.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
That only keeps the link off of the profile - doesn't protect it. e.g. copy your Facebook ID#, log out, log in with a fake/2ndary account that you are not friends with, then paste your real ID in:
http://www.facebook.com/friends/?id=
it's all there. I'm deactivating my account until they change this.
I don't think many people will be that fussed about non-friends knowing who their friends are. A bigger problem will probably be that Pages that you are a fan of are now visible to everyone. This may go against other privacy measures if for example you're a fan of your hometown, or your employer/college etc. Or something that you generally don't want strangers to know that you like...
Sig Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
My name really is Neal Anderthal, you insensitive clod.
I agree, when I do not want everyone to know where I live, why should facebook make this public?
I did not agree to anything like this, when I signed up, and it was changed after the fact, there should have been some
advance warnings before such a move happened as now it is too late, the info has been given out.
And any of the facebook CEOs that back the idea , well if you have something to hide, then you should not be on facebook are signing facebook's death warrant. They are going public, and I wonder if this is some lame *ss idea a competitor came up with and planted to seed their destruction. I see this taking them way down in terms of standads, and will immediately take down my page of their site!
I just hope google has not cached it yet, with the newly public info.
I'm wondering how many people will be disciplined or fired at work as a result of their Facebook profiles.
I used to be a high school teacher, and I'm well aware that teachers' personal lives are under a microscope. In one local case, an elementary school teacher was photographed in the newspaper protesting animal rights when the circus came to town. Sure enough, parents were calling her principal wanting their children removed from her class.
Granted, I had a strict rule with Facebook: absolutely no friending students unless the students had graduated. Of course, if I were still a teacher, a non-friend student could still look up my profile and next thing you know: "Mr. Principal, I don't want my Sally in Mr. Smith's class because he's a fan of 'Creationists are morons' on Facebook."
I was a "fan" of about 40 things. Last night, I un-fanned every one of them. I'm no longer a teacher, but I don't want the public seeing what I'm a fan of...
"Seriously though, I have some friends from highschool that I wouldn't mind getting back in contact with and tried to look up [their cellphone numbers]. But with a common name like Mike Smith and no profile picture or friend information how are you supposed to find people? Maybe these people don't want to be found but that seems to be odd seeing as you have a [cellphone]. If you only want to have contact with people you are already in contact with something else would work, eg. email. [A cellphone] IMHO is meant to help people find people they've lost contact with. This is impossible with too much privacy on the site."
Dude -- if Facebook's primary reason for use was to help people find people they've lost contact with and communicating with people they are already in contact with, then why is MOST of Facebook's pages, code, etc. dedicated to communicating with people *after* you've friended them and only a little of Facebook's pages used to search for people?
I have two Twitter accounts and two Facebook ones. One with a fake name that I use for trolling, harassing celebrities, attempting to get laid and using applications that my real-life friends would scoff at me for. And one in my real name with very minimal personal info and nothing that could be damaging should a prospective employer search me out, simply to see what old mates are up to, stay 'in the loop' with my real life friends and receive PMs, (no one I know seems to use email any more. I always reply via gmail though - better the devil you know...) event invitations and stuff.
You deserve everything you get if you are naive enough to think that free social networking sites aren't going to use whatever information you disclose, however transparent their privacy policy is.
This was the thing that bugged me most about the "improved security": I get increased privacy but FB gets to pimp out my friends. ;-)
I'll pay more attention to those pencils in future
...for nearly 5 years. My profile is completely public except for 1) phone number and 2) photos tagged of me. I have never experienced any event that would cause me to reconsider these privacy options nor has an argument ever been advanced that would convince me to change them.
When we rely on digital information, we have some expectation that things will continue to work over time as they had in the past. For personal computing, we have the option of declining a software upgrade if we don't like the new terms of service or user interface.
Cloud computing is another story: the vendor can change the rules mid-stream and there's no recourse for a user who is dependent on these services. We are captive to the goodwill of the online provider, and at their mercy.
Facebook, and social networking, are only a manifestation of the larger issue.
Hey, that's my information! I think I've been haxor'd!
I'm afraid the Internet will come to be seen as the ultimate tool as the ultimate tool for allowing the powerful, smart, and/or well-connected individuals and organizations to find and exploit the gullible, stupid, and/or powerless amongst us.
---Technology will liberate us if it doesn't enslave us first.
Seems I can edit many of the things you complain about?
Either you're looking about something I don't see, or you don't know how to do it?
This fakenamegenerator could be a great resource for those who want to play Facebook games that require "friends" to gain credits or other capabilities without annoying real people. Now my fake Facebook account can have its own fake friends! And Facebook can inflate the number of users to gain more imaginary value even though nobody pays for the service except advertisers who use the ads as a malware vector (Facebook + IE = Malware Apps and Ads; Facebook + Firefox + ABP = Malware Apps only).
I Cater to the Needs of Stupid People. - from a coffee mug Christmas gift
No "Max Power"?
Go back to Bumfuck, Mickey Mouse.
Because as I go through my facebook profile, I don't see one thing that restricts me from setting ANY potentially PRIVATE information in such a manner that nobody can see it. In fact, everything I've marked private is still private, as I check from another computer that isn't logged in to facebook.
Sounds like someone's trying to drum up some bullshit, or they're just fucking blind.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
at least they are doing something...If I went to your house would your mailbox be invisible or could I steal your mail?
Falsify the information in every category that you would rather keep private. Nobody who actually knows you needs to ask what your gender is.
Legalize it.
The crux of the problem is that facebook did not tell users that the access controls changed.
Yes they did.
Not only did they announce the settings were changing, but the first time you go to the new privacy section, it walks you through all the settings.
I don't understand this whole privacy issue, why is it such a problem? Who is really out there looking for me? Why would it bother me? I put myself out there to be found I want to reconnect to people in my past and want to meet new people isn't this the whole reason for social networking? Am I missing something? People are too paranoid. Be smart about what you post and you should be fine, if your tin foil hat transmit the signals that your teeth fillings/CIA radios are receiving to your brain and tells you that your privacy is going to be sold to obama so the feds can come and get you in the middle of the night, well then you have some serious issues the surpasses that of your "privacy" being exposed.... I sound like a broken record, but people really need to watch The Grinch cartoon, seriously! The Grinch taught us that no matter what spooky/scary men out there (terrorist) trying to harm us by stealing our xmas (freedom) cant keep us down cause who hash and who roast isnt xmas its the spirit we have inside of us. If we keep being scared, paranoid, and retarded we let "them" win. Grow some balls people, use your brain, and stop being so emo over crap that isnt important!
Visit my Forums?
So I might be wrong here, but I seem to remember you used to be able to "approve" being tagged in a photo before it showed up on your profile. I just looked through the help section and found that is no longer the case.
"Is there an option to approve a photo tag before I am tagged in it?
Unfortunately, the functionality of approving a photo tag is not currently available. When you are tagged in a photo by one of your friends, or they tag someone in one of your photos, the tag request will be automatically approved. Please note that you can set your notifications so that you always know when someone tags you in a photo or tags one of your photos. You can control this setting from the "Notifications" tab on the Account Settings page."
The anonymous reader who reported on TFA is not correct that you can no longer control the distribution of your most personal data on Facebook.
To test my theory, I searched Facebook for "mark smith" and found dozens of Mark Smiths whose privacy settings don't share any personal information (such as their city/hometown) with strangers. All I learn about these various Mark Smiths is that:
Then I created a test account on Facebook, and locked it down. See if you can find any info on facebook about the account I just created in the name of: Catherine Fiver.
I'd like to see someone in this thread give a concrete example of a setting they can't actually lock down to an acceptable privacy level, because I've gone over all the privacy settings and it looks like you can lock your account down to a level of uselessness (such as the Catherine Fiver account) where no one else on Facebook will know anything about you unless you connect to them as a friend, and even then they will know almost nothing about you. You can lock down how visible your account is - choosing if you want to allow indexing by search engines - and if your account is found by facebook user searches by non-friends. If you lock your account down to the limit (as I did with my test account), non-friends won't ever find or see you on facebook.
The default choices for each data field are "everybody", "friends of friends", "only friends" and "customize". Within the customize menu you can choose "just me", or allow or block specific people.
"I'd much rather be mistaken as a lesbian by a bigot than be mistaken as a bigot by a lesbian."
Still no Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, etc.
Am I the only person like this still? I don't find it difficult to make plans, find friends, and *gasp* use my phone to actually speak to people!
Maybe it's just me...
Something witty.
If I recall, wasn't a story about FaceBook retaining information after an account was deleted recently on /.? From what I remember, if you posted all your real info to FB, delete your account, and want all of that information shredded... Try this.
Something witty.
Impressive. They even have what could be a valid phone number for Chandler (480-782-xxxx). I work at a semiconductor manufacturer in Chandler, and while I know I'm obviously not the only one, it's still a little weird seeing that come up out of all the possible city/state combinations out there.
This guy has done some decent research into Facebook privacy in terms of their API and such.
http://use.perl.org/~pjf/journal/39998
good read.
And Slashdot falls into this category too - we make profiles, we provide the content that attracts users, sorry, ad-viewers, and the advertisers are the customers who pay for it.
We're not talking about people making their data public for everyone to see - the issue is people who marked their data to be viewed by a restricted set of people, and that's now been made public without their consent.
Now if you're saying you shouldn't do anything online that you don't want public, I don't think this is a valid argument - by that argument, people shouldn't discuss anything using email or IM (which typically rely on free services), and they certainly shouldn't be doing online banking.
Okay sure, I trust my bank far more than Facebook, but that's another matter - there's no intrinsic reason why one should expect private data to suddenly become public. And in general, I'm not sure that the so called "social networking" companies are less trustworthy than companies offering email or IM.
They're not your photos anymore, actually! Unless otherwise marked, all of the photos of you and your friends are property of Facebook as soon as you post them.
Step 1) recieve a friend request from someone you dont know
Step 2) send them a message that says "Hey, do we know each other?"
Step 3) wait for their reply
I do this all the time
This has always worked for me. Maybe it is possible for this anonymous-friend-requester to have all messages from non-friends blocked. If that is ever the case - I wouldnt friend them until I saw my friends friending them. Then I would ask my friends - "who is this?"
no need, i have a friend on FB called Senile Edge
Is this a rhetorical question?
When this change occured yesterday afternoon, I found that a wizard popped up and it prompted me to set new settings or import old ones.
Long story short, I did anything and everything I could to lock stuff down but sadly could not lock as much down as I previously had.
However I've found several people who have got completely blocked profile pictures, friends list, the whole lot. They are completely locked down as I used to be, no 'add this friend' no 'send message' no 'view friends' etc.
Furthermore I've already found a loophole in the new system, I've personally locked my account down so you can't do a search to find me, however if you find one of my friends, go through his friends list - bam, there I am, then click on my profile and you can view my friends and my picture.
The lack of consistency is frankly, bullshit and the invasion of privacy sucks.
The **REAL** problem here, from what I read is that Facebook want to get some of the twitter market and that's fine, I understand why they would want to do this, I have no qualms with that.
The problem is they simply didn't think this out, they should have flat created a new blogging interface based off the status updates, so you can be a 'fan of' someone without being a friend, so you can follow their 'facebook feed' of 'tweets' assuming they have them set to public.
This way, I can follow someones feed without seeing their personal shit. It's simply a case of being a fan of someones feed or being a friend with someone.
They could have stolen the twitter market within 6 months, just replicate twitters functionality with a full social network and friend backend the same way the previous system runs, once people are 'friended'
They've pissed off quite a few people with this change and I've no doubt a few people may actually leave. I'm not willing to call it the beginning of the end for them but it's certainly not a good move.
Cool people trust Facebook with all their information. Slashdotters trust Google with all their information. They both laugh at each other for being so stupid.
If they have a decent transactional database, they'd be keeping a record of everything that happened.
They don't
Once you are done, I urge you to use the "view your profile as a guest" feature (or use another browser to view your profile). I had turned off a few things from public view, but when I left the "wizard" they got turned back on.
Not City, Friends, etc, I expected those. Things like my photo albums, birthdate, and email address. None of which are vital (photo albums are mostly of my daughter playing, birthdate is set but with the wrong year, and the email address is a spamcatcher dedicated to Facebook use), but I did set specific privacy levels for each type of data, and I know I set those three to "friends only".
I only noticed it because I decided to run my account through the "view as guest" and saw a lot more information there than I expected.
I don't know what happened, but several specific decisions I was asked by the new "wizard" to make did not get respected. The defaults for the new "wizard" are very permissive (basically defaults to "everyone sees everything" regardless of your current privacy settings), and I was disappointed but not too upset about that, but then most of the settings changed themselves to "everyone" after I used the "wizard" to lock them down.
I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt and say that something went wrong with the wizard, but I figured it was worth mentioning just in case someone else trusted "Mr. Wizard" to do as they asked, because it apparently ain't always so.
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
Um, it’s quite easy to implement a transactional database in MySQL...
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
IF I EVER MEET YOU I WILL KICK YOUR ASS
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