I have a Facebook account that I rarely use. I generally only log in if someone sends me a friend request, and then I read a little bit of the news feed and leave. In truth, I really should visit more because I have a number of friends and family members who regularly update their status there and upload photos, and it’s nice to see what they’re up to. But I rarely do.
What I dislike most about Facebook (aside from the massive number of requests to use various applications that I get all the time) is that I have to so actively pay attention to my privacy settings there. I’ve read any number of articles explaining the optimal privacy settings for my account, and I’ve probably spent more time tweaking those settings on Facebook than I have on privacy settings for every other Web site combined.
Then last week, Facebook revamped everything and required me to go back and look at the privacy settings again.
What I found when I got there was that Facebook suggested that I abandon all of the privacy tweaks I had made in the past and share everything with everyone. I told it to keep all of my old privacy settings, but even then, things have changed.
The bottom line is that if you have a Facebook account, you’ll want to read the EFF’s guide to Facebook’s privacy changes or some other similar guide to get a sense of which settings you need to modify and which information they’ve placed out of your control. I thought this stuff was supposed to be fun.
Privacy on Facebook
I have a Facebook account that I rarely use. I generally only log in if someone sends me a friend request, and then I read a little bit of the news feed and leave. In truth, I really should visit more because I have a number of friends and family members who regularly update their status there and upload photos, and it’s nice to see what they’re up to. But I rarely do.
What I dislike most about Facebook (aside from the massive number of requests to use various applications that I get all the time) is that I have to so actively pay attention to my privacy settings there. I’ve read any number of articles explaining the optimal privacy settings for my account, and I’ve probably spent more time tweaking those settings on Facebook than I have on privacy settings for every other Web site combined.
Then last week, Facebook revamped everything and required me to go back and look at the privacy settings again.
What I found when I got there was that Facebook suggested that I abandon all of the privacy tweaks I had made in the past and share everything with everyone. I told it to keep all of my old privacy settings, but even then, things have changed.
The bottom line is that if you have a Facebook account, you’ll want to read the EFF’s guide to Facebook’s privacy changes or some other similar guide to get a sense of which settings you need to modify and which information they’ve placed out of your control. I thought this stuff was supposed to be fun.