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."

Comments

another upgrade

[lpaul55]

I guess it depends on what you want to use this for. Me, I want more attention, so it's all good.

Our privacy is not their concern

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Our privacy is not their concern

[Dreadneck]

I keep wondering when people are going to figure out that the purpose of social networking sites - from the viewpoint of corporations and government - is to generate a map of every user's interpersonal connections? Honestly, it's not much different from the work I did in the military where we used radio intercepts and radio direction finding to not only locate each radio source, but to figure out its position in the hierarchy.

Once you realize the purpose - so far as corporations and government are concerned - it's not too difficult to understand why 'privacy' is something to be paid lip service only.

The problem isn't the tool (I don't want to be accused of being a Luddite) so much as those who control its implementation and use.

Re:Our privacy is not their concern

[Shotgun]

'If You Have Something You Don't Want Anyone To Know, Maybe You Shouldn't Be Doing It'.

I think the CEO said that wrong in this case. What it should be is: 'If You Have Something You Don't Want Anyone To Know, Maybe You Shouldn't Be Posting It On A Public Social Networking Site'

I mean, dang, if you're in the federal witness protection program, why are you posting your picture on Facebook? By requiring the picture and address to be public information, maybe Facebook is saying, "We only want our social networking site to be targetted to people that want to network socially."

Again, if you are THAT concerned about your privacy, WHY are you giving our your 'private' information to people you don't know?

Re:Our privacy is not their concern

[blair1q]

You are not their customer, you are their product.

That is true of anyone who sells you to advertisers.

TV, Radio, Google, etc.

You are being farmed for your eyes and ears.

Re:Our privacy is not their concern

[natehoy]

Correct.

Now the decision you need to make is based on the following information:

1. What are they asking me to give them, and
2. What are they offering me in return.

Facebook gathers the information you enter and sells it to advertisers for fun and profit. In return, they give you a virtual meetingplace chock full of tools for finding old friends and acquaintances, keeping in touch with same, organizing events, etc etc. What you are giving them in return for this service is:

  - Your name and any other information you actually enter into Facebook. That includes interests, hobbies, etc for matching "the right ad" to you (enter "kayaking" as an interest and those "good luck charms for kayakers!" ads will appear almost instantly). This is "level one" of the data, and allows them to target ads to you.
  - Your habits while on Facebook. Do you spend most of your time on your home page, your news feed, or an app? What kinds of things do you click the "like" button on a lot? What kinds of things do you reply to a lot?
  - Things you and your friends do as a group, and what activities and discussions you have with various friends.
  - They also allow third parties certain levels of access to your data based on applications your friends run.

Is it worth the price? For me, yes. I understand what I'm selling them, and I feel the service is worth the price. The same is not true of everyone.

Of course, one fallacy is that you always have to enter all of your real information into the site. It's not your Father Confessor. Enter the city closest to your town, not your actual town. Enter a slightly-but-not-quite birthday if you feel you must have one out there. Enter information about yourself that people who know you could use to recognize you (if you want to be sought out) but that would not give an anonymous stranger tools to use against you.

Re:Our privacy is not their concern

[natehoy]

First, I don't think you understand the new choice you have. You can make your City and other information public, or you can restrict your search visibility. It's not "make this information public or you can't use Facebook at ALL", it's "make this information public or it becomes harder for people to search for you".

If you have an abusive ex, you've (hopefully) already taken measures to protect your privacy, such as moving somewhere your ex can't find you, getting an unlisted number, etc. I think you'd understand the value of an option that includes the text "becomes harder for people to search for you". Making yourself non-searchable on Facebook should be RIGHT UP THERE on that list of security measures, if you choose to use Facebook at all.

If you have been through the process of protecting yourself from an abusive ex, then you already understand why it's a bad idea to enter perfectly accurate data into ANY online database about you, even if that information is "supposed" to be kept private. Especially if that promise comes from a company like Facebook who has already developed a pretty piss-poor track record of actually respecting your privacy.

You can still use Facebook if it's important to you. Just for God's sake don't enter the real city you live in or any other information that your ex can use to find you. For example, enter a city where other people who know you would think of - maybe the town you were born in, or somewhere you lived in for a long time. Or don't enter a city at all. Or if you want to enter your real city make yourself non-searchable and make your initial Facebook contacts offline.

And keep in mind that some of the people who you think of as friends may also possibly be friends with your ex. Facebook is one possible vector for them to get information about you, but if you have a truly vindictive ex who has it in for you, there are many others you need to worry about first. If you enter some comment about having a great time at a concert that was less than a mile from your house, and one of your FB friends who talked to you about it on FB makes friends with your Ex, then your Ex can see that conversation. They can then look up details on that concert and they have your house location identified within a mile.

You can be safe, or you can be found (by friend or foe). Choose one.

Social networking is not about privacy

[Anonymous Coward]

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".

Re:Social networking is not about privacy

[jareth-0205]

If you're concerned about your privacy, you should not be using social networking web sites.

Sociable people often want to communicate... The same people would not necessarily want any person in the world to know what their friends know. And people have different circles of friends, with different levels of communication between them. Facebook has gone some way to catering for this, it's just a shame that they have set the defaults so low.

It's not black-and-white, just because someone would be upset that information leaks someway to somewhere it shouldn't be, doesn't mean we shouldn't make a decent stab at getting it as right-as-possible, and accept that there's always a little risk.

Re:Social networking is not about privacy

[Anonymous Coward]

The internet is anything but "Private".

My bank account is accessible via the internet; does that mean it's public knowledge and anyone can get that information?

Re:Social networking is not about privacy

[suomynonAyletamitlU]

This goes back to something I originally wrote for a computer ethics class, but which I believe I commented on slashdot before with, which is the principle of "reasonable expectations" and how they differ between crowds.

A college student (or frankly anyone else) whose social life up till now has been dependent on trusting his friends not to spill details of his private life will not approach something like Facebook with the idea that the medium itself is going to betray them, privacy policy be damned. They don't expect someone they talk to to turn around and stab them in the back with it, unless it's someone that everyone publicly reviles for that sort of thing. Facebook may seem to some here to be publicly reviled, but honestly, we're not the ones those people talk to. They talk to friends who have spent the last couple years posting there and who have never had any concern with it at all. In short, the consumer expects the company to know that their data is precious to them and that it should not be treated with disrespect.

The company itself has a different standard for reasonable expectation; they expect people to know that when you give them marketable information after signing a disclaimer, it's alright for them to sell it. Further, it's alright to index your information in ways that is most useful for the community even though it might expose an individual or two who didn't understand the risks or who didn't care. In short, the company expects the consumers to know that they're still the ones who exposed their data and that they, not the company, are liable if it gets into the wrong hands.

Who's right?

Well, the answer is that the system itself is wrong. If the consumers did in fact completely understand their responsibility and liability in the matter beforehand, then they can be held accountable. However, if the company is putting up a privacy policy in hard-to-read and denser-than-necessary legalese, and in particular if they have come to the understanding that some percentage of their users don't understand because of this but they don't change their ways, then the company is the party which could have changed something to prevent the incident, whereas the users were acting in a way that seemed reasonable. The company being the person who could have prevented the incident, they are ethically responsible; in particular, because this is probably known to happen with some large subset of the population, they are in general responsible and it would take an unusual circumstance for the user to be the one who did something wrong.

Note: IANAL or frankly an ethicist; however, this does NOT take a genius to figure out.

If you want privacy then don't use

[bl8n8r]

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.

Re:If you want privacy then don't use

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a difference between making your personal information available to just your friends, who may want to know where you are and what you're doing... And then posting a giant neon sign for the entire internet to see saying, "HERE I AM!"

I got on facebook to reconnect with friends. Not to have everyone and their brother connect with me.

What facebook needs is privacy that's more... granular? Would that be the right word?

Re:If you want privacy then don't use

[kevinbr]

Everything I put on Facebook is public. if I want some secrets I keep it off of facebook. You can watch me walk down the road, watch me shop, watch me play with my kids in the park etc etc etc. Life itself has very few privacy controls when you are in a public space. Facebook is a public space.

You don't need to be my "friend" to see my content.

Re:If you want privacy then don't use

[tylernt]

If you don't want your name, address, phone, measurements,

If everyone knows my measurement, why do I keep getting penis enlargement spam?!

Re:If you want privacy then don't use

[Spazztastic]

If you don't want your name, address, phone, measurements,

If everyone knows my measurement, why do I keep getting penis enlargement spam?!

Because everybody has been lying to you.

Sorry to break the news...

Re:If you want privacy then don't use

[Ephemeriis]

Everything I put on Facebook is public. if I want some secrets I keep it off of facebook. You can watch me walk down the road, watch me shop, watch me play with my kids in the park etc etc etc. Life itself has very few privacy controls when you are in a public space. Facebook is a public space.

You don't need to be my "friend" to see my content.

I think a lot of folks here on Slashdot are a little paranoid about privacy... Or, at least try to sound like they're paranoid about privacy.

The fact of the matter is that there's precious little privacy in the world. When I'm working out in my front yard, I've got no privacy. When I'm shopping or driving or walking down the street, I've got no privacy. At work I've got no privacy.

Why would anyone expect that posting something on the Internet, quite possibly the most public space in the world, would be private?

Re:If you want privacy then don't use

[jareth-0205]

Everything I put on Facebook is public. if I want some secrets I keep it off of facebook.

Bully for you. The rest of us have a more subtle approach to social networking. Sometimes we want to share things with some people and not with others. This is hardly strange behaviour.

Re:If you want privacy then don't use

[ground.zero.612]

Everything I put on Facebook is public. if I want some secrets I keep it off of facebook. You can watch me walk down the road, watch me shop, watch me play with my kids in the park etc etc etc. Life itself has very few privacy controls when you are in a public space. Facebook is a public space.

You don't need to be my "friend" to see my content.

I think a lot of folks here on Slashdot are a little paranoid about privacy... Or, at least try to sound like they're paranoid about privacy.

The fact of the matter is that there's precious little privacy in the world. When I'm working out in my front yard, I've got no privacy. When I'm shopping or driving or walking down the street, I've got no privacy. At work I've got no privacy.

Why would anyone expect that posting something on the Internet, quite possibly the most public space in the world, would be private?

Why do people in their house with the blinds closed and the doors lock expect privacy? Because the previous controls to limit your exposure were synonymous with window shades and door locks.

I open the shades so I can see out, and with that I accept the risk that someone can see in. At least before these changes I had the ability to do just that. Now? Not so much.

Re:If you want privacy then don't use

[DefenseEngineer]

I think a lot of folks here on Slashdot are a little paranoid about privacy... Or, at least try to sound like they're paranoid about privacy.

The fact of the matter is that there's precious little privacy in the world. When I'm working out in my front yard, I've got no privacy. When I'm shopping or driving or walking down the street, I've got no privacy. At work I've got no privacy.

Why would anyone expect that posting something on the Internet, quite possibly the most public space in the world, would be private?

Your analogy is seriously flawed. When you are out working in your front yard, shopping, driving, or walking down the street, you do have privacy. Unless of course you walk around handing out cards to every single person you pass that includes your full name, city, country, gender, picture, a list of all clubs/networks, a list of all your friends and their associated full names, cities, countries, genders, pictures, clubs/networks, etc.... I personally don't have such a card much less pass it out to every person I ever see.

Also makes social engineering harder

[TheCycoONE]

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)

Re:Also makes social engineering harder

[LandDolphin]

I beleive you can require them to submit a message with their friend request that explains who they are or why they want you as a friend.

Facebook is not about privacy.

[QuietLagoon]

They do not "get" it. I am convinced Facebook does not want to preserve the privacy of its users. When I went to Facebook last night, I was presented with a pop up menu to select my new privacy options. All the defaults were set to looser privacy than I had previously set for my account. I had to manually restore the stricter privacy settings.

.
Facebook does not care about the privacy of its users. Get used to it.

Re:Facebook is not about privacy.

[natehoy]

Um, dude, YOU ARE NOT a customer of Facebook. Their customers are advertisers.

You are the PRODUCT.

Re:Facebook is not about privacy.

[jDeepbeep]

Has Facebook gotten so smug that they feel they can do whatever they want and people will just deal with it.

Yes.

Where are they making their money?

[jollyreaper]

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.

privacy

[ILongForDarkness]

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.

Smackdown

[whisper_jeff]

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...

Re:DON'T LIKE iT? DOn'T USE IT !!

[xouumalperxe]

Yes, but you'd be canceling it now, after the data was exposed to begin with.

Give false info

[petes_PoV]

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.

Facebook - worse-er and boring-er by the day

[snotclot]

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.

Re:What's the complaint?

[D Ninja]

But, it wasn't. Facebook notified that there would be "stronger privacy changes and improvements to better help control your information." Nothing was ever said about, "We're going to make some information available whether you like it or not." And, that's crap.

Re:DON'T LIKE iT? DOn'T USE IT !!

[bmearns]

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.

Re:DON'T LIKE iT? DOn'T USE IT !!

[Minwee]

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.

Friends List

[Aladrin]

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.

greg...let's go to the map!

[phillipao]

so you can't hide your city anymore...carmen sandiego is FUCKED

Re:DON'T LIKE iT? DOn'T USE IT !!

[Runaway1956]

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.......

Re:What's the complaint?

[natehoy]

No, you wouldn't have noticed a change, because the walk-through explains what portions of your profile are now irrevocably public that used to be subject to the "Only Friends" security setting.

Of course, given that your friends already have access to whatever you've set to "Only Friends", and every app they install has whatever access they have to your profile, the "Only Friends" setting is a tad misleading. "Only Friends, Farmville, Mafia Wars, Lost Sheep, Cute Fluffybunnies, and whatever crapplications your friends might happen to install" might not fit in the space available, though.

Remember to block your information from Apps!

[TejWC]

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.

Re:DON'T LIKE iT? DOn'T USE IT !!

[clone53421]

Better suggestion: Use fakenamegenerator and come up with something that doesn’t look like an obviously bogus profile.

Re:DON'T LIKE iT? DOn'T USE IT !!

[sakdoctor]

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.

Re:What's the complaint?

[colfer]

The walk-through tries to change all your settings to everyone (less private). If you just click "OK", that's what you get.

It's amazing Facebook tried to pawn this off as an improvement in privacy; it is the opposite.

Re:DON'T LIKE iT? DOn'T USE IT !!

[uberjack]

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.

Oh come on

[jimicus]

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.

Re:DON'T LIKE iT? DOn'T USE IT !!

[clone53421]

Huh? I was referring to fakenamegenerator.com.

Patricia A. Thurston
3626 Dye Street
Chandler, AZ 85225

  * Website: BiotechRoom.com
  * Email Address: PatriciaAThurston@text2re.com
  * Password: oorail9Ae
  * Phone: 480-782-0388
  * Mother’s Maiden name: Horan
  * Birthday: December 8, 1967
  * MasterCard: 5143 8915 6264 6991
  * Expires: 4/2010
  * SSN: 765-12-1098
  * Occupation: Semiconductor processing technician
  * UPS Tracking Number: 1Z 203 2A4 74 3343 146 3

Re:DON'T LIKE iT? DOn'T USE IT !!

[steelfood]

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.

Boycot Facebook

[Requiem18th]

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.

Re:So what?

[js_sebastian]

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.

Now they also see the list of all your FB friends. That's something I would consider private.