Facebook announced some Privacy Policy changes this past week and many users just skipped over the announcements to get to Mafia Wars and Farmville… If you’re one of those, there are a few things you really should be aware of.
From the policy:
“Everyone” Privacy Setting. Information set to “everyone” is publicly available information, may be accessed by everyone on the Internet (including people not logged into Facebook), is subject to indexing by third party search engines, may be associated with you outside of Facebook (such as when you visit other sites on the internet), and may be imported and exported by us and others without privacy limitations. The default privacy setting for certain types of information you post on Facebook is set to “everyone.” You can review and change the default settings in your privacy settings. If you delete “everyone” content that you posted on Facebook, we will remove it from your Facebook profile, but have no control over its use outside of Facebook.
Summarized: By default, nothing you do on Facebook is private. If you care about privacy at all, you should take the time to change that.
For instance, did you put your real birthday on Facebook? Do you want the world to easily find it? Hello Identity Theft…
Graham Cluley has a good article up on his blog titled “Facebook privacy settings: What you need to know” and I’d encourage you to give it a look. I’ve taken the liberty of including his video here which I found helpful as well. Give it a watch.
I personally am appalled at this change to make all data available to the world. However, I use Facebook enough with friends and family that I find it too useful to just quit. I’ve made the changes as discussed in that video. If you’re using Facebook I’d encourage you to make similar changes!
Facebook has more information at the “Updates on Your New Privacy Tools” blog post as well.
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December 13th, 2009 
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At some point it would also be nice if people woke up and STOPPED logging into their email and Facebook accounts when they are in the *insert cell phone provider store of your choice here*. I am shocked at how you can walk up to any phone in one of those stores and view someone’s account, because they left in logged in or better yet, autosaved their passwords on the demo phone. What are they thinking? You can’t fix stupid, but I don’t think they realize how much information you can access about them through these accounts.
P.S. The new blog format looks good. I don’t see any broken links either!
I like the ones that login from public places like that and check the “remember me” box by reflex.
(Glad you like the new format!)
Ugh I got totally done over because im lazy I just skipped over and then realised my profile was on view to the whole world later….why cant facebook make it so changing privacy isnt default but a pro-active option, what are they trying to do!?
Nick, Facebook seems to really like opt-out over opt-in, don’t they? Annoying for sure.
o-oh i’m one of those skippers!!! glad to have read about this. i really should go there now..i don’t want to flaunt everything to everyone!
thanks to your post!
Hi,
intresting article. Here in Germany is still a big discussion about the privacy of Facebook going on. The people are a little bit scared, that FB gets to many information or will missuse it.
Greetings
AMUNO