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Facebook - The Implications of Surrendering Your Privacy

It would be much less of a headache if you don't exactly enter all of the information about yourself. For example your birthdate. Just put down month and date but leave out the year. For location. Just put down the county and not your actual home address.

Like a few people mentioned before...you don't need to put down ALL of your info. Your friends already knows you.
 
At this point though, any small amount of privacy you presume to have left is really just an illusion... Facebook sells your personal info to advertisers, big whoop. That's just a drop in the bucket compared to Google, who keeps track of every query you search for while logged in. And what about your smart phone that reveals your activities and interests by tracking of every scrap of information that you surf for and access, including exactly where you are on the globe when you accessed it?

Google's response to concerns over privacy is "if you are worried about us knowing what you're doing... then should you really be doing it?" That's comforting... companies don't last forever, so I'm guessing that some day the biggest database of personal information ever assembled will wind up in the hands of a different entity altogether... probably Skynet. ;-)
 
A couple of years ago, I saw a report on some tv show related to this topic. A company was looking for a new employee to fill an office position. They looked up the candidates on myspace. They found a young lady who had applied on there. In EVERY ONE of her pictures, she was drinking or holding an alcoholic drink. She looked pretty silly. They still called her in for an interview while the cameras were there. The employer showed her what they saw online and she couldn't say anything. She was set up for the purposes of the show. The cameras also interviewed her and she said in retrospect, it was a mistake to show only those types of pictures, as it gave a pretty narrow perception on who she was.

It was very amusing. :D Keep this in mind if you will be looking for a job anytime soon.
 
Something else I realized today, but don't know if it's a concern or not. When I was on FB looking at the edit friends page, I noticed a Pages link. When I went to it, I had all of my pages I had "liked" or subscribed to. I noticed that I could lock them down the same way I could friends. So, what I'm saying here is, could whoever made those pages be accessing my account? I locked them down as far as I could just to be safe, but it's a little disconcerting knowing that they might potentially have the same access as others.
 
You would be amazed what is out there about yourself from various site gathering urls. Look at Spokeo, search for yourself, and you will be amazed what you find. This is not just a Facebook, Twitter or whatever issue. You might want to delete yourself while you are here. Of course the info is out there in other places too.
 
Gosh I hate Facebook. But I'm 21 and until 6 months ago I was a student so it's kinda a social requirement.

The only way I can see to deal with all this is not to put anything but my name, location and one photo on there. I don't even have a wall. I use it as a glorified email account and I resent the fact that my friends are too lazy to just use email/text. Especially since nothing on it ever works.
 
I am fairly sure there are a number of nekkid pics of me randomly floating around the web, it hasn't effected my employment at all.:D
 
iBlue said:
The idea of an employer looking into your facebook stuff is very disconcerting. I don't care if there's anything to hide, I just think some things should be kept separate. What I do on my own time shouldn't be the business of my employer unless it's affecting my job.
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Very true, unless one takes out a 30 second commercial and advertise what they did last weekend, or rent a billboard to invite ones friends to a party, or post what one did on the Internet. They're all the same. People who post their life online then have a fit when that information isn't "private" need a reality check.

Second, in reply to those that have said, "Just adjust your privacy controls. Only friends can see x, y, and z. I tested my settings with a dummy profile and they work." --- You're wrong. Just because you can't "see" that information via your web browser didn't mean it isn't publically available. Don't believe me? Read about the new Facebook API that shares your "private" information to anyone who can access FB via API (read: anyone who makes a webpage that can query the API).
 
scotty96LSC said:
You would be amazed what is out there about yourself from various site gathering urls. Look at Spokeo, search for yourself, and you will be amazed what you find. This is not just a Facebook, Twitter or whatever issue. You might want to delete yourself while you are here. Of course the info is out there in other places too.
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I'm amazed . . . that most of their information is wrong.
 
There are articles popping up everywhere about Facebook's sub-par privacy features. I have a feeling that if the community pushes hard enough, they might crack down and tighten up.

...or that could be wishful thinking!
 
spice weasel said:
There are several things I hate about Facebook, not least of which is that I just don't care to receive all of the inane updates about what my contacts are doing at each minute of their day. People with babies and young children are the worst (sorry, parents, but it's true. I don't want to hear about how little Joey puked on you this morning, or how much baby Sarah's last diaper change stunk). For this and several other reasons, I quit Facebook a long time ago and deleted my account.

The thing I dislike the most about Facebook and all similar forms of social media is how idiotic some users are. My rule was to never, ever post photos that contained other people in them without their express permission, no matter how innocuous they seemed to me. It always amazes me, though, that some people out there post photos of their friends drunk, acting silly, etc. These are the types of things that employers search for and can easily find. Not cool.
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Jett0516 said:
It would be much less of a headache if you don't exactly enter all of the information about yourself. For example your birthdate. Just put down month and date but leave out the year. For location. Just put down the county and not your actual home address.

Like a few people mentioned before...you don't need to put down ALL of your info. Your friends already knows you.
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I agree with these two posts.

I have pretty much no info on my profile.

When you think about it...why bother having anything at all if you are so worried about restricting your profile view. I'm sorry but I have gotten 0 value knowing what a friends favorite movie is.

and yes..I am getting very annoyed at how often people update statuses with the stupidest things.

Its sad. On mondays, I have my whole news feed filled with ah i hate my job blah blah blah. On fridays i have oh happy hour blah blah blah. I have people who are in med school complain constantly about lab...like seriously every day..the same posts.

I have other people that just write the stupidest things, I delete them right away.

I've begun to dwindle my list to cut down on these people. Once a month I cut the bottom 10% off my list. Do that each month for a few months and my friends list will be more bearable.
 
Digging up and bumping this one back up concerning the Facebook privacy issue, Since I am an advertiser using Facebook I can assure you I don't dig very deep except for general market data so don't worry much about me. On another note I received this letter in my e-mail today concerning privacy settings from the FB ads team concerning their changes in policy enjoy the read:

Hi David,
Facebook will roll out changes today that will make it easier for our users to understand and control their privacy settings. As this change will have an impact on our users, we wanted to let you, a valued advertising partner, know about it. Please note that this change will not affect your advertising campaigns and there is no action required on your part.



Facebook is a company that moves quickly, constantly innovating and launching new products to improve the user experience. The feedback we heard from users was that in our efforts to innovate, some of our privacy settings h ad become confusing.
 


We believe in listening to our users and taking their feedback into account whenever possible. We think the following changes address these concerns by providing users with more control over their privacy settings and making them more simple to use.



Starting today, Facebook will: 

* Provide an easy-to-use "master" control that enables users to set who can see the content they share through Facebook. This enables users to choose, with just one click, the overall privacy level they're comfortable with for the content they share on Facebook. Of course, users can still use all of the granular controls we've always offered, if they wish.

* Significantly reduce the amount of information that must be visible to everyone on Facebook. Facebook will no longer require that users' friends and connections are visible to everyone. Only Name, Profile Picture, Networks and Gender must be publicly available. Users can opt to make all other connections private.


*
Make it simple to control whether other applications and websites access any user information. While a majority of our users love Facebook apps and Facebook-enhanced websites, some may prefer not to share their information outside of Facebook. Users can now opt out with just one click.

I encourage you to take a moment to read our CEO Mark Zuckerberg's blog post and check out the new Facebook Privacy Page.

Thanks,
The Facebook Ads Team
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