Facebook just made some changes to
it’s privacy policy and I thought I’d provide some resources on what it
means.
A few weeks ago, Edward blogged on the dotRights campaign organized by the
Northern California affiliate of the ACLU. They
have entire page dedicate to what
the change in the facebook privacy policy means, and I would strongly
consider reading it.
The most important thing to realize
is that the default facebook privacy settings may be sharing more information
with the world than you’re comfortable with. Privacy is subjective and everyone
has different boundaries for how much information they are willing to share
publicly. What is most troubling about the new Facebook privacy policy is that
there is a tier of information that Facebook has decided is public,
and cannot be controlled by an individual facebook user. That information
includes: your name, city, gender, photograph, the profile pages
you are a fan of, and your list of friends. Although that set of information is
fairly innocent, it is still an example of Facebook making a privacy decision on
behalf of its users. This
New York Times article describes the some of the scrutiny that the policy
change has received.
Most people don’t log onto Facebook
to spend 10-15 minutes deciding who can look at their pictures, write on their
wall, and see their status updates. But it’s worth taking the time to look over
the policy and at least know where information about you stands. I just spent 15
minutes making sure I was satisfied with my own privacy settings, and it is
definitely empowering. Learn more
about the ACLU of Northern California’s great dotRights campaign
here.