Facebook and Privacy Settings

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Hi, I am hoping there can be some expert people here to talk about privacy settings and what it is wisest to do on Facebook. Recently I have discovered some good articles on privacy settings,

http://www.allfacebook.com/facebook-privacy-2009-02

http://www.allfacebook.com/facebook-pri ... gs-2011-02


but today I hit upon these 2 articles which worried me.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_thelookou ... rd-parties

http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/04/facebook-timeline


In the future, what will happen to people's facebook pages? If people's information is sold and privacy settings are made less easy to set up, what should people do?

People should leave Facebook. However, that is not actually an option. You cannot delete your account, and once they have your information they're never giving it up.

haha
if you dont want your information shared dont share it with facebook
so bloody true
i doubt it will happen, people will put a stop to it

In all fairness isn't it like this now?
Privacy settings make little sense, something particularly annoying right now; I went to Facebook to find about 50% of the updates were actually my friends commenting on their friends updates - basically I can see what they're saying to people I'm not friends with, thus also seeing these strangers updates too. I have to then assume strangers can see my updates via my friends comments. I also worry when Facebook highlights on my friends feeds that I've left comments on the Asperger's group, etc. You play certain games they take your details; telephone number and email for example.

It's generally dodgy as hell, always has been...but it's so widely used and so vital to so many people...I think we are overdue for a new internet 'thing' to take over from Facebook, it is a shame as Facebook for me was an example of one way the internet should work; as a way to connect with anyone in the world, find information they are willing to share, etc.

I don't think it's just Facebook that's an issue when it comes to privacy - look at MySpace, look at Yahoo which is nice enough to share things I've posted on news stories for all my email contacts to see and despite privacy settings shows various information about me via internet search, sites that seem to magically know details about me that I've never shared with them. It seems that there is just no such thing as privacy any more...and that also extends to people, companies, doctors - I've had my privacy breeched so many times I really don't think that I give a damn any more

seriously if FB DOES do this there will be lawsuits against mark
i for one will be the first one to sue him he he gives out my info

You can edit your profile, all your posts and your images to replace personal information with innocuous information. Leave this up for a while before leaving Facebook and all links to any of your content will then return the innocuous replacement text.

If they disable your account its there on their servers forever, people's privacy is being invaded by FB and in my opinion FB should be stopped.

They disabled my account for no good reason a year ago, and went though some negotiations with the BBB, didnt get any decent reply.

It is said if you add people on FB whom you don't know they will disable your account, this is true, I always thought if you talk to people you don't know is like meeting a person from a public bus, you could have meet this person from a public bus or on a site like this, FB has no way to prove it.

I was really popular on FB and someone reported me out of being jealous and I ended up getting the rough end of the pineapple.

"Rough end of the pineapple". I like that phrase.


Yeah I only just joined last week and I am trying to set up my privacy settings in quite a tight manner. There are many photos of me looking pretty wasted floating around, and it is possible one of them might end up on my page so I have set it up so only certain people can see tagged photos of me.

Still it is unbelievably complicated! I guess I have to treat it as a public resource and keep it clean and non-personal.

The best privacy setting I ever changed on Facebook was the "disable account" one.

The thing is that many people joined years ago and were naive about social networks online, and what they entail.

Also, as seen in one of the articles I posted, the privacy settings were far tighter and easier to use at the beginning, and now it seems as if Facebook wants to put as many loopholes in that as possible.

They change their policies, so it may not have seemed like as big of an invasion of privacy when people first signed up, or people may have signed up without really considering what the ramifications could be later on and now it's too late to leave since they will keep your information anyways.

FB reserves the right to make unannounced and unilateral changes to any part of their relationship with their users. That is reprehensible.

Not really. Back in 2006-7, most people had thought little about the privacy issues of the internet. There were few articles circulating around about it and social networking sites were new and exciting and the thing to join. It would have attracted a lot of non tech-savvy people. Not being tech savvy doesnt mean you have a personal problem. Im just glad I didnt join up back then as I would not have been clued in about what I should have been doing.

The changes are unannounced and unilateral.

The thing about TOS is that a lot of people do not have the attention span or the technological or legal knowhow to read through all that fine print. There is a reason why a lot of legal contracts are unreadable to the average person, it is so that a company can create the opportunities for loopholes. The company may be in the right legally, but it doesnt make it right ethically or morally.

You essentially have to re-read the TOS every time you log in, or they can legally do whatever they want. They inappropriately construe ignorance of a completely unannounced policy change as explicit consent to that policy.


How so?

Incidentally, I don't even use Ubuntu anymore, because I dislike some of Canonical's decisions and the direction Ubuntu is taking, but I haven't seen them doing that kind of privacy violation.

No one reads those things, Joe. And it's virtually impossible to be a college student without Facebook- so much stuff is organized solely through FB.


I was aware of the Banshee incident. The Unity shell looks like garbage from what I see so far, but it can't be much worse than Gnome 3 shell.

I run Debian. Mint is no better than Ubuntu.