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Friday, February 25, 2011
Introduction
For your own safety and protection you should always review the privacy settings of any application or website you join on the web. Facebook privacy is rather complex and its policies have often been controversial in regards to how much user information is being shared. That is why it is important to have a good understanding of how your information is shared and what policies and controls Facebook has in place for privacy.
Reviewi this lesson carefully in order to get a better idea of how to set your privacy controls to a level you are comfortable with.
You've heard the stories surrounding Facebook privacy issues. They range from someone being slightly humiliated by a photo that was shared to an employee being fired for making negative comments about their boss. Facebook has several levels of privacy that could prevent such situations, but unfortunately many users do not pay attention to their privacy settings and that can lead to trouble.
What You Need to Know About Facebook Privacy
You've heard the stories surrounding Facebook privacy issues. They range from someone being slightly humiliated by a photo that was shared to an employee being fired for making negative comments about their boss. Facebook has several levels of privacy that could prevent such situations, but unfortunately many users do not pay attention to their privacy settings and that can lead to trouble.
Facebook automatically defaults privacy settings to Everyone. In other words, if you do not set your privacy settings, then your information will be available to anyone and everyone both within Facebook and outside on the web for anyone to search, access and use.
Some public information from your profile is always considered publicly available and is excluded from privacy settings. This information includes your name, profile picture, gender and networks you belong to. You do however have the option of not including photos, gender and networks in your Profile.
When you connect with third-party websites and applications they can access and use information Applications and Websites if you plan on connecting with third-party sites. on Facebook related to you and your Friends. In other words. when you respond to a survey or join a game, you are giving these sites access to your account and all the personal information about you and your Friends. You should pay special attention to the privacy settings for Applications and Websites if you plan on connecting with third-party sites.
Facebook allows advertisers to serve advertising to you based on characteristics obtained from your personal information. Facebook does not share your information or who you specifically are without your consent. However, if you click on an advertisement, that advertiser may put a cookie in your browser for tracking purposes.
Privacy settings for minors are not allowed to be set to Everyone or Public Search. Profiles for those under the age of 18 are limited to Friends of Friends and Networks and are not listed in the public search option. However, their public profile information including name, profile picture, gender and networks are still available.
Understanding the Basics of Privacy Settings
When you sign up with Facebook, your privacy settings are defaulted to Everyone. Everyone includes everyone on Facebook and anyone on the Internet that conducts a search for your name. If you want to protect your personal information and your activity on Facebook then it is a good idea to customize your privacy settings.
Understanding the Social Experience
Facebook Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg is famous for stating that Facebook's privacy settings are defaulted to "social." Social PlugIns, Instant Personalization and Facebook Places are features that make your experience on Facebook more open and social across the web. However, this also means your personal information and activity may be openly shared too.
Understanding Privacy and the Use of Applications
Before you decide to add or connect with Facebook-enhanced applications, games and websites, you first need to understand what information they can access. If you don't set your privacy settings for Applications and Websites, it could result in a public display of your name, images and activity via applications.
- When you visit or connect with an application, you are allowing it to access any information that you have made visible to Everyone. For example, an application can access your photo albums and create slide shows in the advertising area if you don't set your albums to a more secure setting.
- Applications can also access any publicly available information (Name, Profile Picture, Gender and Networks).
- Various applications may request your permission to access additional information before you can connect with them. You should ask yourself how comfortable you are with granting an application permission to your Facebook information before continuing. You may decide that protecting your privacy is worth more than what the application has to offer.
- When your Friends authorize applications they could be exposing you with them! Once your Friend accepts an application, the application may access their Friend List which includes you. Fortunately, Facebook has privacy options you can set regarding what your Friends can share about you.
Applications are never allowed to access or use your contact information. This would be a violation of Facebook's Privacy Policy. If you feel like an application has violated Facebook's policies--or your privacy--you can report the violation to Facebook.
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