Facebook & Your Privacy: What's Changed

In recent weeks, popular social networking site Facebook has come under intense scrutiny for its privacy controls and how it handles and discloses the data users give the website. It's hardly surprising, and the outcry from the press and Facebook's users is hardly unwarranted. Back when the site started just for college students, and most content was by default hidden from anyone not on a user's friends list. Now, the site is open to everyone, and with constant revisions to its terms of use Facebook began showing more and more information to the world by default. By early May 2010, its privacy policy had more words than the U.S. Constitution (1). Users wanting to restrict access to certain information had to navigate through a whopping 50 settings with 170 options (1).

In addition to the byzantine privacy controls, Facebook also had serious "bugs", such as allowing applications to be installed to a user's profile without their knowledge-Facebook did not even have to be open in their browser (2). Another glitch allowed hackers to modify a user's privacy settings via innocuous links (3). Facebook was also sharing identifying information with advertisers (4). Responding to the concerns, Facebook has recently streamlined its privacy options to a much simpler version (5). Here's what's different.

What has changed
The new privacy settings will be rolling out to all users in the coming weeks-the changes haven't come to my profile yet, although even if they haven't there are still options for quickly checking how secure your content is (see the last paragraph of this article). The biggest change users will see is that instead of separate pages for different types of content and settings (your photos, your contact information, your friends), all privacy controls are now handled from a single page. There are several levels of protection: you can have your info or posts appear only to "friends", "friends of friends" (meaning someone who is my friend's friend can see my content, even if I am not their friend in turn), and "everyone" (which, 'nuff said, means everyone will be able to view it).

To help others find you, Facebook now has a "basic directory information" group of settings that control what content will be available to view when people are searching for you (the stuff that will distinguish you from the other John Does out there, like your hometown, school, and networks.) Finally, there's a block list for friends and applications.

What hasn't changed
While your settings are global, you can change them as you used to on a post-by-post basic using the lock icon. Facebook's app settings are still opt-out, meaning that by default all information available to anyone is being fed to apps as well. This isn't too bad, but most apps will also be authorized for more personal data when you install them, so read the warnings before you install. The good news is that burning apps with fire is much simpler.

So does Facebook's recent words and changes really mean much? Considering that CEO Mark Zuckerberg called early users of Facebook who gave him information "dumb f****" (6), and was not above using Facebook information to find out passwords to user's email and correspondence (7), it doesn't seem that his word is good for much Ultimately, as a company offering space for your videos, photos, notes and thoughts, Facebook gets money from advertisers, and it is in the company's interest to trade user information to those advertisers-this means these kinds of privacy concerns are likely to persist. The best way to stop that is to delete your account permanently: if you're tired of Facebook, log in (one last time) and click this link. For those that cannot or will not go that far, thoroughly vetting your settings and using transparent, third-party tools like ReclaimPrivacy can help you keep your data as safe as possible (8).

References
* (1) Gates, Guilbert (May 12, 2010). "Facebook Privacy: A Bewildering Tangle of Options". The New York Times. Accessed May 26, 2010.
* (2) Kelley, Heather; Nick Mediati (May 6, 2010). "New Facebook Social Features Secretly Add Apps to Your Profile". PC World. Accessed May 27, 2010.
* (3) McMillan, Robert (May 19, 2010). "Facebook Fixing Embarrassing Privacy Bug". The New York Times. Accessed May 27, 2010.
* (4) Bangeman, Eric (May 21, 2010). "Report: Facebook caught sharing secret data with advertisers". Ars Technica. Accessed May 23, 2010.
* (5) Levy, Brett; Tina Trinh & Carrie Halperin (May 27, 2010). "TechBytes: Facebook's Privacy Changes". ABC News. Accessed May 27, 2010.
* (6) Business Insider (May 13, 2010). "Facebook CEO Slammed 'Dumb' Users Who Trusted Him in College". Gawker. Accessed May 27, 2010.
* (7) Carlson, Nicholas (March 5, 2010). "In 2004, Mark Zuckerberg Broke Into A Facebook User's Private Email Account". Business Insider. Accessed May 26, 2010.
* (8) Michaels, Philip (May 23, 2010). "Securing Your Facebook Privacy Settings". PC World. Accessed May 27, 2010.

Further reading
* Facebook's new Privacy Guide