Facebook and Privacy Concerns.

It has been said that in their hunt for market dominance, social networks Facebook, Google Buzz, and Microsoft Live are redefining what “social” means and in the process, straining the bounds of personal privacy.

I can only concur as I have written about Facebook previously. As reported earlier it was relatively simple to close one’s account but devilishly difficult to purge ones private information. In fact it took some 35 “clicks” to achieve that if indeed one could only find where to click. The issue has finally forced the proprietors to take some action but concerns still persist.

Facebook, the daddy bear of these three, has made quiet changes to its privacy settings, ones that members need to understand if they are going to manage the distribution of their personal information.

Facebook certainly has a place in your marketing strategy where privacy issues are not as concerning as they are for private use.

As much as Facebook is useful and provides a popular service to its members it has a plethora of flaws. It seems the proprietors of Facebook find it necessary, or possibly profitable to change member privacy settings, usually with little notice to them. These privacy settings have become increasingly lax.

What's beneficial for Facebook, however, is not necessarily good for members as their personal information might end up in places they never intended. The world is filled with marketeers who would love to know increasingly more about you. And if that doesn't concern you, the world also contains stalkers and hackers who might use that personal information toward evil ends.

Take your Facebook (or any other social network) privacy as seriously as you do protection from malware on your PC. Indeed it is easier to deal with your PC since many tools exist to do this for you almost without much input from you.
The big social networks continually tweak privacy settings so this is not just a Facebook problem.

Facebook's privacy settings have become more discontinuous over time and consequently far more tedious and complicated to manage. Even more irritating is that, as Facebook adds new categories of settings, it often uses “Everyone” as the default. And “Everyone” means not only all Facebook members, but anyone viewing associated sites.

New Facebook members are especially likely to give out private information unintentionally. Working through a morass of privacy settings is not foremost in their thoughts as they first build their new Facebook wall. Unfortunately, that means they get the default, open-to-all “Everyone” privacy setting.

When deciding what personal information to share, you have two choices. Either don't put it on Facebook to begin with or put it up but restrict who can see it. Realize that not every field has to be filled out.

If you're going to post information you don't want the whole world to see, or if you just want to generally tighten up your privacy settings, start with the following
:
Personal Information and Posts: Most settings in this section default to Everyone or Friends of Friends. For a balanced level of privacy, I suggest selecting either Only Friends or Only Me, depending on your comfort level.
Here, Facebook makes things difficult for new members. Initially, the settings dropdown list does not contain Only Me. You must select Customize and then Only Me from another dropdown list for each privacy setting.
If you want to use Facebook's most-restrictive setting, “Only Me”, you must go into custom settings.
Furthermore, some of these settings affect the level of your friends' privacy when they interact through your wall. For example, when a friend posts a comment on your wall, “Posts by Friends” controls who else can see that post meaning Everyone, Friends of friends, and so on.

Contact information: Facebook tightens its default settings for direct-contact information to Only Friends, but if you don't care to share your screen name, mobile or other phone number, or current address, change it to Only Me.
The last three settings on the Contact Information page Website, Add me as a friend, and Send me a message are all preset to Everyone by default.
If you include your Web site URL on your wall but don't want it showing up on a search engine list, consider adding a robots.txt file to your Web site. See your webmaster for help.

Friends, Tags, and Connections: This section controls what information people see on your profile, and the options are relatively simple. Items such as Friends, Family, Relationships, and Photos are set to Only Friends by default, and that's probably how you'll want to leave them.
Some information (such as your Pages and list of friends) is still public and can be accessed by Facebook applications you and your friends use.

Facebook Pages offer a convenient way to stay on top of your favourite interests from within your profile page. The key is to carefully consider which pages you choose to “Like” and which applications you agree to run.

“Liking” a Facebook Page is different from, liking a post, photo, or link. When you “like” a page, Facebook automatically subscribes you to a feed from that page which often represents a commercial product or company. Facebook’s apps are a real worry.

How your privacy is kept or lost when using Facebook applications is probably the least understood and most worrisome aspect of this social network. The privacy controls for apps are found in the “Applications and Websites” section.

To put it simply, don't run Facebook applications if you don't want to distribute personal information beyond your friends. The following example shows what happens when you run an application. To use a popular game application as an example all your profile information and photos, your friends' info, and other content it requires to work is pulled into the gaming system such as Farmville. You have only two choices: Allow this to happen, or leave the application. If you let it happen, a vast amount of your personal information is now governed by Facebook's privacy policies and importantly by Zynga’s, the company that owns Farmville and which may differ.

Therefore each new application you link to in Facebook could add another layer of privacy management. This could be another argument for not posting sensitive information where it's not fully under your control.

Facebook applications have no middle ground. If you run an app, you're automatically sharing at least some information. You can't run an application just for yourself, as you would a spreadsheet or database. For this reason it may be best not to subscribe to any of them.

The most-important app settings fall under “What your friends can share about you through applications and websites”. By default, nothing can be shared except your name, sex, and profile photo plus any information that fell under the “Everyone” option in the other privacy categories. Best to leave all boxes unchecked.

Should you choose to run Facebook applications, consider changing the “Activity on Applications and Games Dashboards” control's default setting from Only Friends to Specific People, or even to Only Me.

If you don't want to show up in the search results of unknown Facebook members, tighten the Search setting from Everyone to Friends of Friends or Only Friends. Unchecking Public Search Results also helps keep unknown Web surfers away.

Aside from the obvious anti-stalker benefit Block List enables, it also has a Preview My Profile button that displays how most Facebook members see your profile. It gives a good view of how tightly you're locked down.

Recently, Facebook opened up “Instant Personalization”, another way for strangers and outsiders to view your personal information. Currently, there is a setting at the bottom of the “Applications and Websites” page called Instant “Personalization Pilot Program”. If you opt into this service, selected Facebook partner Web sites can instantly personalize their applications, based on your personal information.

This list of partners is constantly expanding. Even if you opt out of Instant Personalization, your Facebook friends might still share Facebook information about you if they opt in. As far as I can tell, your only recourse is to block each of the application sites.

This could mean going to each apps page and clicking on Block Application, if that even exists. So far, the apps include the recommendation service Yelp.com, Microsoft Docs.com, a Web-based document creation and sharing system, and the music-streaming service Pandora.

No wonder Facebook users are becoming annoyed. If Facebook adds dozens of these apps within the next month, a significant investment in time will be necessary just to tighten up these newly loosened controls.

For the tightest privacy, you should log out of Facebook before visiting these or any other Web sites partnering with Facebook through Instant Personalization. It's certainly inconvenient to monitor whether you're logged into Facebook, but people who wish to share as little personal information as possible with these third-party sites are force to take these steps.

If you want to see what the world can view just visit Zesty.ca's page at http://zesty.ca/facebook/ . "What does Facebook publish about you and your friends?" shows you what, if anything, public Internet users can see of your Facebook content. It's a useful tool for managing the personal information others are allowed to view.
You could get quite a hefty surprise.

If you do want to quit it will still take some 15 clicks to do so. To save you the trouble log into your account and just go to https://ssl.facebook.com/help/contact.php?show_form=delete_account&_a=15
You will be presented with the Delete My Account screen.

To make sure that all your information has been removed use the Zesty link again.
It sure ain’t easy!

Just remember that Facebook is under significant pressure from a large range of objectors so these settings are likely to change. Just persist with your digging!