Personal information to become public on Facebook?

[jodiemiller]

Storm in a teacup? What do others think?

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/09/12/10/1341220/Facebook-Masks-Worse-Privacy-With-New-Interface?from=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Slashdot%2Fslashdot+%28Slashd ot%29

[Anju]

Well considering you can still make it as private as it was before, Ill put it down to Storm in a Teacup, although if you really were hiding from someone and they got your info before you could change it back, then yeah that could be really bad.

[jodiemiller]

'Publicly available information includes your name, profile picture, gender, current city, networks, friend list, and Pages.' Where you could previously preserve the privacy of this information and remain publicly searchable only by name, Facebook now forces you to either give up this information (including your current city!) to anyone with a Facebook account, or to restrict your search visibility — which of course limits the usefulness of the site far beyond how not publicly sharing your profile picture would.

What if people couldn't find you?

[soulmama]

people can't find me and I like it that way.

Unless you are a friend already, you don't have access to my account, can't send messages or add me. Some of my "friends" accounts are limited already as well. ;)

:)

[emd]

I think that if users are made very aware of what information can be found through searches, then it's OK. If you don't want someone to know the city you live in, you can still be searchable - just change your city to one you don't live in (like all the tweeps who claim to live in Ramallah).

However, I don't feel comfortable with friend lists being viewable. This means that even without being able to "friend" you and therefore access your personal details, they could use friend lists to put together the connections between you and your friends and family. They might "friend" a family member, or find a friend whose wall is publicly visible, and then have access to your semi-public interactions with that friend or family member.

Something people should think about is their online security not just on Facebook, but in general. For example, are there other places where someone can find your address, phone number, email address, names of your children, family photos etc that is public? People sometimes get upset about one website making it easy to find them, without realising that they can also be easily found on lots of others too.

[jodiemiller]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nf/20091212/tc_nf/70579



In a not-uncommon development for the social-networking leader, Facebook's recently released privacy controls are leaving the company a bit red-faced. As a result of a new policy that by default makes users' profiles, photos and friends lists available on the web, almost 300 personal photos of founder Mark Zuckerberg became publicly available, a development that had gossip sites like Gawker yukking it up.

Kashmir Hill, a blogger for True/Slant, first reported Zuckerberg's new exposure, noting, "Either Mark Zuckerberg got a whole lot less private or Facebook's CEO doesn't understand the company's new privacy settings." Under the new privacy regime, user profiles are exposed to the web unless users are proactive about limiting access.

Hill reported that while Zuckerberg has in the past offered very limited access to his Facebook information, his profile is now "uber-public." Hill reported: "I can see his wall, his photo albums, and his events calendar. Zuckerberg recently became a fan of Taylor Swift, uploaded graphic photos of The Great Goat Roast of 2009 three months ago, and plans to attend the Facebook holiday party on Friday night. I can even tell you where it's going to be held."


To be honest, I have tracked people down through my friends' friend lists many times.

[mummabare]

Something people should think about is their online security not just on Facebook, but in general. For example, are there other places where someone can find your address, phone number, email address, names of your children, family photos etc that is public? People sometimes get upset about one website making it easy to find them, without realising that they can also be easily found on lots of others too.

thats true, some places don't let you edit posts and some places change all together. I'm always reviewing my security settings on facebook. I have blocked 3 people. With one person I blocked I then went through and changed the security settings of some people who are still on my friendslist, because I felt she could easily access photos etc from their computer. Its sad to have to do that, but at the same time, we have to aknowledge that there are unstable people in the world and we should be careful on the internet as much as we are careful in other aspects of our lives I guess.

[emd]

Yep. For me, I've kind of gone the other way - my entire life, including photos of my insides, are on the internet. It's not like the old days when I could just have a silent phone number to avoid people intending to do me harm. If someone specific were after me (like women with violent ex-partners, or people with controversial and very public profiles) it would be a different matter though.

[Rinelle]

I have to admit to not putting any photos up on facebook. Even my profile picture is my icon, not a photo. Not that there aren't plenty of photos of me out there, but they aren't associated with my name and all my other details. I've always been reasonably cautious about what I put out there on the internet, though as usual, I'm sure if someone was determined enough, they could work it all out.

[jodiemiller]

I untag a lot of photos not related to birthy stuff and don't post pics of the kids or my husband or share any personal details. My photos are now only visible to friends of friends. Not that they're very exciting.