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Open Source Utilities For Facebook Privacy
dward90 writes "Two online projects will scan and edit Facebook privacy settings for maximum protection: ReclaimPrivacy (reclaimprivacy.org) and SaveFace (untangle.com). The article says: 'Several new applications have launched this week that are designed to easily reset a Facebook member's privacy settings, following new changes from the company that make a sizable chunk of profile content public by default when it was once kept under lock and key.'"
... or is it just a bad idea to be able to change privacy settings via Facebook's API? Couldn't some other site/service "open the flood gates" instead of locking them down?
RIP America
July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001
What prevents these apps from keeping a copy of the info in their databases before changing the settings?
They run javascript on the facebook page, can they be used to steal my facebook password?
I've noticed recently that many non-facebook accounts (cnnmoney.com for example) know about my facebook account. Usually I see a link/graphic at the bottom of the page that says "click to 'like' this" or something similar.
Anybody know how to keep these third party sites from knowing about your facebook account?
I tried it, and without asking, Untangle.com reset all my privacy settings!!! This is unacceptable as I had painstakingly customized it to better settings than default.
Use reclaimprivacy.org looked much better - it simply listed what is wrong with my account.
And that, my liege, is how we know the Web to be banana-shaped.
This new learning amazes me, Sir Zuckerberg. Explain again how a series of tubes may be employed to eliminate privacy.
Oh, certainly, sir.
Look, my liege!
[trumpets]
Facebook!
Facebook!
Facebook!
It's only a website.
Shhh!
Friends, I bid you welcome to your new home. Let us ride... to Facebook.
[singing]
We're Friends of the round table
We Poke when e're we're able
We do Farmville and play Mob Wars
With mousework impecc-able
We lurk around on Facebook
We tag and quiz our friends a lot!
[dancing]
We're Friends of the round table
Our Likes are for-mid-able
Though many times we're given gifts
That are fake and unuse-able
We're news-feed mad on Facebook
We check from mobile phones a lot!
[tap-dancing]
Oh, our Walls we cradle
Quite indefatigable
Between our posts we friend request
And pad our list where able
It's a busy life on Facebook
I have to push the 'Hide' a lot!
[outdoors]
Well, on second thought, let's not go to Facebook -- it is a silly place.
Right.
Right.
And now for something completely different!
Zuck: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard
Zuck: Just ask.
Zuck: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS
[Redacted]: What? How'd you manage that one?
Zuck: People just submitted it.
Zuck: I don't know why.
Zuck: They "trust me"
Zuck: Dumb f***s.
Cue an endless series of phishing sites: "Did you know that anyone on the internet can see things you post on your Facebook page? Just type in your username and password and we'll scan your profile to see if it's secure..."
I work in IT for a small police department, and recently have begun doing presentations for parents on Facebook and general online privacy, what steps can be taken and how to watch out for warning signs of problems. I'd say at least half the parents I talk to are completely unaware of what information is freely available online about their kids, if allowed to use such a site, or how much information their kids are making available online.
It only takes about 20 minutes to educate a neophyte, if they're willing to learn, how to lock down privacy on Facebook.... He said with a pained expression. One thing which never ceases to boggle my mind is the number of parents (and people in general) who really don't understand and don't CARE what information is out there, or what it can mean. ID theft, home intrusion, stalking, all that pretty much is "someone else's problem", producing enough SEP power to cloak an average sized nation.
While products like this are certainly useful, the bigger issue is education. If you're aware of the changes to FB and the like, setting security takes all of a minute. If you're unaware and someone tells you, and if you're not particularly inclined toward looking over security settings, it might take someone 10-20 minutes to go over them with you. If you just plain don't care, no amount of open or closed source software is going to make any difference whatsoever.
MOD +5 INSPIRING
What is SEP Power?
Facebook is the world's worst gossip. You tell them anything, they will tell it to every one of your friends, their friends (marketers), and probably anyone else who so much as passes by.
All these tools essentially do is add a "and please don't tell anyone" onto your data entries. The real solution is not to tell the gossip anything in the first place.
May the Maths Be with you!
SaveFace automatically goes through and sets your privacy to "Only Friends" for everything. This may undo certain privacy measures you've already taken. For example, I set up a Limited Profile friend list for people who don't need to have access to my e-mail addresses, screen names, etc and blocked those items for them. SaveFace went through and removed those restrictions, so any of my friends could see my e-mail addresses, screen names, phone number, etc.
This tool would work fine if everyone on your friends list are actually friends who you'd like to share all of this with. On the other hand, all those folks from high school I added don't need to be able to IM me, call/text me, or use my e-mail address for anything.
http://www.facebook.com/help/contact.php?show_form=delete_account
Is it really so hard to simply go through Facebook's privacy settings yourself and consciously set them to whatever you want (as far as that's possible)? Same with all these warnings people pass around through status updates. I keep seeing suggestions to the effect of "click this, then that, then that, then 'wet your pants in public', then 'no'" only to find that I've already done that anyway. If you're really concerned about your Facebook privacy, what's been keeping you from checking out the relevant options yourself? They're not hidden, they're just... many. Or is there something that external "helpers" can do that you can't do yourself?
You may make yourself unemployable by posting things you shouldn't in public {...} they can only work with data you give them.
Or, some idiot might post un-appropriated stuff about you.
In fact, you don't even *need* to have a facebook account to get embarrassed by people you made the mistake to consider as friends.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
See here under "Yes, Facebook can get you fired."
Mr. Fulmer and his wife made fun of a local church sermon in a podcast they posted online in 2005. Mr. Fulmer says it got so much attention, his boss listened to it, thought it was offensive and fired him.
The thing is, sharing things about yourself can be objectionable to an employer - and you don't know what they could be.
What may be completely harmless or even your God given right to say or do, may make you unhirable for an employer or even fired. Against the law in some cases - prove it. They can always find a legitimate and legal excuse to not hire you or fire you.
The best thing to do is pass on Facebook.
RIP America
July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001
Even if you turn off instant personalization, facebook still knows every time you visit one of those partner sites. But NoScript (I leave scripts enabled globally) has a cute feature called Application Boundary Enforcer. Here's (some of) my config:
Site .facebook.com .facebook.com
Accept from
Deny
Site .fbcdn.net .facebook.com .fbcdn.net
Accept from
Accept from
Deny
Enjoy!
Using the ReclaimPrivacy page worked great, made appropriate suggestions and allowed me to one-click fix select privacy settings. After running my profile through the SaveFace tool, however, it actually loosened my privacy settings automatically (changed some things which were set as "Only Me" to "Friends Only"), and did so without allowing me to interact and with no prompt telling me what it was doing in advance, with no way to stop it.
It doesn't finish the scan for some reason - hangs on "scanning". Might be just me, might be FireFox which is damned goofy and crashes often for me, or it may be Fluff Busting Purity (which kills the animal and Mafia postings etc. via Greasemonkey). Other than it hanging on those two things it does look to be the better tool in that it examines settings and warns vs setting them to whatever the other tool thought was most appropriate when it was written.
A very nice concept though!
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
All I see is the JavaScript when I click on the bookmark. (Ubuntu 10.04, Firefox) Help?
I care not for your karma and your mod points.
Insidious, ain't it? The only way to see if someone's posted Photoshopped naked pics of you in Facebook is to be on Facebook.
I liked Web 1.0 better, where Photoshopping people on nude bodies was only done to celebrities, who had decided to give up all their privacy in their choice of career, for considerable fringe benefits. That or banished to some obscure part of the Internet.
Web 2.0 is all the disadvantage of celebrity, with none of the benefits.
--
Toro
Instead of using facebook's privacy settings which they can arbitrarily ignore as they see fit at any point in the future, I say be proactive.
1) Create social-group specific facebook accounts - one for high-school, another for college, another for people you meet professionally, another for hook-ups, etc.
2) Use different browser profiles dedicated to each facebook account - see firefox's command line options " -no-remote -ProfileManager "
3) Add plugins to differentiate the profiles - "User Agent Switcher" to make each profile look like a different release of firefox, "BetterPrivacy" to block super-cookies that get shared across profiles in Flash and then all the basics like adblock, CookieSafe-Lite, noscript, ghostery, etc. This makes each profile look like a different user behind the same firewall
4) Never ever use those facebook-specific profiles for anything else, keep separate profiles for regular web browsing and any other specific tasks (banking, etc).
5) Use theming to make each profile look different on your screen so you don't accidentally use one profile for another task
While not foolproof, this approach puts all the control in YOUR hands rather than relying on websites to honor their promises - plus it isn't facebook-specific, you can use separate profiles to isolate websites you give personal information to from the rest of your web browsing and thus keep the behind the scenes 'leaking' to a minimum.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
NoScript, and your done.
whitelisting > blacklisting
Don't even try it. We need local solutions that scale ''left'' down to some kind of district/relational size. In other words it IS all about who we are, plus where we want to grow as people and think long-term and quality of life while doing this.
Facebook is a Web site that's privately owned with an end-user license agreement the user must adhere to that's more heavily supply oriented than demand based IN TERMS OF CONTEXT, not to mention all that data and information.
They'll begin to reverse engineer, drop api support or strip the api's down ( Google never will ) and could implement Web performing, .NET-centered stuff at the first opportunity to contravene all of your open activity.
"can-you-see-me-now dept." NO! shit! This is radar. How do you know what it is if you really don't know where?
also check out: http://www.rabidgremlin.com/fbprivacy/
Before creating a Facebook account, please consider this:
Everything that you put into Facebook is public. If you don't want people to know, don't post it.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Deleting your account isn't as easy as you may think, but here are the instructions: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=16929680703
I had a load of 'only friends, except.....' and it reset them to 'only friends' !!!
*without asking* and only briefly saving 'resetting settings' ! :-(
Anything you put in Facebook will become public.
/. crowd is so oblivious.
Doesn't anybody realize this? They've exhibited it time and time and time again. Why is anybody still bothering to play games with settings and tools and such? Facebook says so in their massive (and growing) privacy statement.
Anything you put in Facebook will become public.
This tool, and every similar tool is a waste of time and effort. If you can imagine or if you can imagine that your grandchildren may not want any information to be public, DO NOT PUT THAT INFORMATION IN FACEBOOK.
I'm amazed that so much of the
I don't respond to AC's.
Immagine a plugin that could encrypt your data on facebook with a shared key between groups of friends and subkeys to see the other groups, and the keys don't have to stay on FB
just need to tell all millions clueless users...
I don't get it? Are you guys putting your bank account info and keeping all your passwords on facebook? Don't get me wrong, I think Zuckerberg is a major douchebag but people are acting as if they put all their vital information on facebook.
Everything you post or say on Facebook is copied by the Pentagon and countless other groups of criminals and losers. The very founder of the service said it best when he called users of Facebook "Dunb F*cks" and I couldn't put it better myself.
If you want the Government to have pictures of your house, kids etc then by all means keep your retarded Facebook or Myspace account and help them spy on you.
YOU ARE ALL DUMB F*CKS FOR USING THIS SHIT IN THE FIRST PLACE - USE THE OPENSOURCE FREEWARE TOOL GOD GAVE YOU CALLED "COMMON SENSE" AND PROTECT YOUR INFO INSTEAD OF TWEETING WHEN YOU POOP FOR THE GOV
The ONLY reason I've been pressed into having a Facebook account is to have SOME measure of tabs on, if not control of, what OTHERS post about me.
"Good news, everyone!"