So if you are like me, and you want to use facebook to stay in touch without having your information being used in ways you didn't expect, this is a good read. For me, the most useful tip was the first, to create "friend lists". These lists allow you a finer degree of control over who (which friends) see your information. If you have "work contacts" and "personal friends", like I do, you can appreciate how you might want to have a bit more control over who can post things on your wall for others to see etc. Its all in the article Enjoy.
Now I'll just make this comment that these settings protect your information so long as FaceBook is not doing evil private information sharing (selling the information, being careless with their backup tapes etc.) AND it assumes that whoever buys facebook in the future also is not doing evil things, AND it assumes that their servers won't get hacked and have all the private information stolen and sold on the Internet.
So if you trust FaceBook, and are banking on them not getting badly hacked, this tips should help keep you safe.
Enjoy!
Greg.
For some scary reading, start with this (year old) article. http://www.virginia.edu/uvatoday/newsRelease.php?id=4019
ReplyDeleteBasically - every Facebook app you install has access to your private data - whether it needs it or not. Even 3rd party apps. So next time you install the latest trendy Facebook app - remember - you're trusting yet another group of strangers to safely access, store, and protect your private data.
Wow that is scary Cam! Thanks for the link to that great article. Definitely food for thought for folks who didn't know Facebook shares their personal data that way.
ReplyDelete