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.
Showing posts with label reclaim privacy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label reclaim privacy. Show all posts
Wednesday, 19 May 2010
Tuesday, 18 May 2010
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.
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.
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