Chances are you have a Facebook account. If you have iPhone, Droid, or Blackberry, you are probably spending good part of your day updating your status on Facebook wherever you go. You would also have about 130 friends that you connect with. Some of them you might know well, while the others you might have accepted friend requests just to avoid awkwardness of denying. I know too well. I admit I am one of them.
Recently there has been some buzz in media about Facebook privacy policy. When discussing privacy policy, I often hear that it's too complex to understand, Facebook changing them too often, users not sure how to configure the settings, and life seemingly going on without any noticeable change. I think people think of Facebook privacy policy as credit card or bank privacy policy statements that they so happily throw out in recycle bin every once in a while. After all people use Facebook to share things, not hide them. What's wrong with letting people see my life story? More visitors I have, more power to me because traffic means power in new Web 2.0, right?
Well, true, if you are Coca Cola selling Cokes. But not sure about you. Ok, you might not care, but what about your significant other's story? What about your 16-year old son's? What about your 12-year old daughter's? What about your prospective employee's? What about your current employees'?
I think the problem is that people don't really understand what they are doing on Facebook, and what it means to share, more accurately whom they are sharing it with. Trusting Facebook will do the right thing for you in determining how to share the info is just wrong approach. Facebook's incentive is for you to connect with more people and share as much data as you can, so that they can serve better targetted ads. That's their business model. That is why Facebook's out-of-box privacy policy is to share Friend connections, bio and status update including photo uploads.
What that means is I can go to sites like youropenbook.org, and search on status update and photos. Instantly I can pull up all status updates that contains phone number with profile picture, or whatever information that you happen to share on your status update. What's even scarier is that sites like youropenbook.org is built on Facebook API. This means any college kids can put together a quick PHP code to access these information.
It's interesting to note that as recent as last week, Facebook allowed even non-Facebook users to see user profile when following Facebook account link. Today I noticed that Facebook disabled that access, but profile wall is still accessible if you are logged on to Facebook, even if you are not a friend of the person you searched.
That's not all. Let's say if you locked down your privacy settings so that you are sharing your status updates and photo uploads with friends only. If you have a friend whose privacy policy is default, meaning share status update and photos, then you are again exposed. Whatever status update or comments that you make to that friend's wall is shared with everyone because Facebook decided to follow page owner's privacy setting, not the author's privacy setting.
This search on Facebook status update is not an experiment on Facebook's part. They intend to open this up for wider consumption. In fact Facebook has entered agreement with Microsoft to integrate Facebook status update searches into Bing last year. Given the deep relationship with Microsoft and Google's increasing threat of entering social networking market, this integration is only going to be developed further.
So watch out. Your social life on Facebook begins naked. It's up to you to clothe yourself appropriately. Unless of course you are a naturist.
Recently there has been some buzz in media about Facebook privacy policy. When discussing privacy policy, I often hear that it's too complex to understand, Facebook changing them too often, users not sure how to configure the settings, and life seemingly going on without any noticeable change. I think people think of Facebook privacy policy as credit card or bank privacy policy statements that they so happily throw out in recycle bin every once in a while. After all people use Facebook to share things, not hide them. What's wrong with letting people see my life story? More visitors I have, more power to me because traffic means power in new Web 2.0, right?
Well, true, if you are Coca Cola selling Cokes. But not sure about you. Ok, you might not care, but what about your significant other's story? What about your 16-year old son's? What about your 12-year old daughter's? What about your prospective employee's? What about your current employees'?
I think the problem is that people don't really understand what they are doing on Facebook, and what it means to share, more accurately whom they are sharing it with. Trusting Facebook will do the right thing for you in determining how to share the info is just wrong approach. Facebook's incentive is for you to connect with more people and share as much data as you can, so that they can serve better targetted ads. That's their business model. That is why Facebook's out-of-box privacy policy is to share Friend connections, bio and status update including photo uploads.
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| Hello World! via Youropenbook.org "My New Number Is..." |
It's interesting to note that as recent as last week, Facebook allowed even non-Facebook users to see user profile when following Facebook account link. Today I noticed that Facebook disabled that access, but profile wall is still accessible if you are logged on to Facebook, even if you are not a friend of the person you searched.
That's not all. Let's say if you locked down your privacy settings so that you are sharing your status updates and photo uploads with friends only. If you have a friend whose privacy policy is default, meaning share status update and photos, then you are again exposed. Whatever status update or comments that you make to that friend's wall is shared with everyone because Facebook decided to follow page owner's privacy setting, not the author's privacy setting.
This search on Facebook status update is not an experiment on Facebook's part. They intend to open this up for wider consumption. In fact Facebook has entered agreement with Microsoft to integrate Facebook status update searches into Bing last year. Given the deep relationship with Microsoft and Google's increasing threat of entering social networking market, this integration is only going to be developed further.
So watch out. Your social life on Facebook begins naked. It's up to you to clothe yourself appropriately. Unless of course you are a naturist.
Ha, NSFW alert on the last link ^^;
ReplyDeleteGood to know you are following all my links. :-) Now removed the NSFW link.
ReplyDelete