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Facebook Masks Worse Privacy With New Interface

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the it's-a-book-of-faces dept.

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."

5 of 446 comments (clear)

  1. Give false info by petes_PoV · · Score: 4, Informative
    Nothing they require is verifiable, so just make it up. After all it's an online medium so no-one cares what you look like, which city you sleep in or whether you wear dresses, or ties (or both - but not together: that's just weird).

    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
  2. Re:DON'T LIKE iT? DOn'T USE IT !! by Minwee · · Score: 5, Informative

    So cancel your account, wise guy.

    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?

    Jeez, people are stupid.

    Indeed.

  3. Friends List by Aladrin · · Score: 4, Informative

    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
  4. Remember to block your information from Apps! by TejWC · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  5. Re:DON'T LIKE iT? DOn'T USE IT !! by sakdoctor · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.