Facebook to unveil new privacy controls

Facebook will respond to privacy concerns with new, simpler settings, executive Mark Zuckerberg writes in a Washington Post column today.

He says: "The biggest message we have heard recently is that people want easier control over their information. Simply put, many of you thought our controls were too complex. Our intention was to give you lots of granular controls; but that may not have been what many of you wanted. We just missed the mark."

Zuckerberg says the controls will be introduced in the coming weeks, and there will be an easy way to turn off "all third-party services".

He also explains Facebook's principles –

You have control over how your information is shared.
We do not share your personal information with people or services you don't want.
We do not give advertisers access to your personal information.
We do not and never will sell any of your information to anyone.
We will always keep Facebook a free service for everyone.

Quit Facebook Day - 31 May

A website has been created where you can pledge to quit Facebook on 31 May. To date, more than 5,000 people have committed themselves to shutting down their accounts. What's interesting are the comments posted on the site. Infosolutionwiz writes, "Change your settings, don't put up your personal information, and stop complaining. If you don't want people to have personal information about you, DON'T POST IT IN A PUBLIC FORUM. In addition, there is no privacy on the internet in any case... Anonymity is an illusion" In response, meh says that's not necessarily true if you have apps installed. The reply to that, naturally, is not to install apps.

It's an interesting conundrum - I think people generally understand that their information on Facebook could be made public, but there's a difference between it automatically propagating all over the internet like a virtual billboard, and information appearing only if you look hard enough, like the classifieds section of a newspaper. Clearly there's a demand for information to be as private as possible, and for that information to be handled with care. Furthermore, while it's true that the internet is "public", we do do private transactions every day when we shop and bank online (although some of our information might be used by marketers or credit reference agencies). So why can't we trust our Facebook information be treated as such? Right now, it appears a lot of us can't.


Update: More than 13,000 people have now signed up.

Facebook to introduce "simplistic" privacy bands

After the huge backlash regarding Facebook's confusing privacy settings, Facebook is poised to introduce "simplistic" settings that show privacy bands. But will it work? And would they have done this if there wasn't a huge fuss?

In a radio interview, head of public policy Tim Sparapani said that: "Now we’ve heard from our users that we have gotten a little bit complex. I think we are going to work on that. We are going to be providing options for users who want simplistic bands of privacy that they can choose from and I think we will see that in the next couple of weeks."

Read more here: http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/05/facebook-simple-privacy-choices/#ixzz0oK6cMzcI

During the interview Sparapani defended Facebook's privacy settings and said that it was better than having none at all, and the reason why there were so many settings was because every element of information could be adjusted to a certain level of privacy.

Reclaim Privacy - the Facebook widget

Reclaim Privacy
I noticed a great little widget that you can use on Facebook that tells you what information you might be sharing with others. Simply go to www.reclaimprivacy.org and click and drag the "scan for privacy" link to the widget to your bookmark bar (if you're unsure, the site has some great help files). Then log into Facebook and click the bookmark. You'll see in the grab below that thankfully I'm protected from a lot of my information being made public. The "caution" amber field tells me to beware of a few settings. In this example, some of my contact information is exposed to the whole internet. You can access and fix the relevant privacy settings, then click and re-scan. Easy. Already 30,000 people have become a fan of the Reclaim Privacy page on Facebook.

Facebook: the privacy backlash

Facebook has gone rogue. Facebook has had its MySpace moment. Facebook is becoming too big for its own boots. You cannot expect your profile to be private anymore without a degree in Facebook privacy settings. It's time for an open alternative to Facebook as this Wired article proposes.

http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/05/facebook-rogue/

The sad truth mentioned in the article is that the reason Facebook has made so many privacy settings open by default is because you can't be online and expect things to be private anymore. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said it himself to a live audience this year. His exact words were:

People have really gotten comfortable not only sharing more information and different kinds, but more openly and with more people. That social norm is just something that has evolved over time.
"We view it as our role in the system to constantly be innovating and be updating what our system is to reflect what the current social norms are."A lot of companies would be trapped by the conventions and their legacies of what they've built, doing a privacy change - doing a privacy change for 350 million users is not the kind of thing that a lot of companies would do. But we viewed that as a really important thing, to always keep a beginner's mind and what would we do if we were starting the company now and we decided that these would be the social norms now and we just went for it."

Although everything is out in the open, the excuse is misguided. These "norms" have formed, arguably, because of sites like Facebook that make it so easy for us to share information, and people don't always assume that this information can be read by anyone. They don't necessarily want these to be the "norm". Facebook has forced the norm upon us.

Facebook's bewildering privacy options: in graphic form

The New York Times recently attempted to explain the plethora of privacy options available on Facebook and how this has changed over the years. As I blogged earlier, the privacy policy has more words than the US Constitution. Flickr, the photo sharing site, only has about 350 words in its privacy policy; Facebook has upwards of 5,000.

Even if you lock your privacy policy down, your friends can still share some of your information with third-party applications: check to see exactly what's being shared. I don't recall which ones of these are ticked/checked by default but some of the information includes relationship status and political views.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/05/12/business/facebook-privacy.html

Public status updates - how much is out there?

This proof of concept site, called Openbook, shows just how much information Facebook users leave open to the world.

http://willmoffat.github.com/FacebookSearch

As the creators of Openbook explain, Facebook "do not go a good job of indicating how public each piece of information you share on the site will be. Second, they change the rules far too often. If you understood Facebook's privacy settings two years ago (or even six months ago) that information would be worse than useless with today's bewildering settings."

Take a look at the information people share - whether they like it or not.

Facebook in crisis mode

A report this week by the New York Times revealed that Facebook's privacy policy has 50 different settings and 170 options. The paper also found that the policy is longer than the US Constitution with 5,830 words.

Facebook's employees have been holding meetings after many people have begun complaining of the way it's been handling members' data lately, the BBC reports. This isn't the first time of course that Facebook has been the brunt of criticism from privacy campaigners and everyday folk concerned about Facebook's privacy policies. But recently, things have been particularly fraught.

Last week, TechCrunch reported how a security hole – which was quickly patched – allowed you to view your friends' live chats (ironically via a privacy feature that let you view how your page looks to other people).

And a couple of weeks back, Facebook announced a major initiative which would link your profile to the underlying architecture of the web using the "Like" feature, thus extending its reach and power beyond the walls of its web page. Businesses and other organisations can put the "Like" widget onto their web pages, and people can instantly become a Facebook fan of the said product/person/organisation. But a security setting within Facebook lets third party websites use your info for marketing and "personalisation" services. You can choose to "allow select partners to instantly personalise their features with my public information when I first arrive on their websites". Some people I know had this box already ticked!!

We're back - kind of

It's been more than a year since I've updated this blog, and that is an absolutely massive length of time in the world of the web. And particularly in the world of Facebook and its privacy policy!

In the past year we've seen Facebook make some massive changes to the way people interact with it. I'll try and find an opportunity to resurrect this blog soon!

The evolution of privacy on Facebook

This makes for fascinating reading: how much private data on Facebook has become available to everyone else. Go check your privacy settings!

http://mattmckeon.com/facebook-privacy