As social networks have become more popular, hundreds of millions of people have been putting their personal information on the web, often with little thought as to how this information can be used against them by criminals or swept up by marketers. This week, Facebook started rolling out a major new privacy initiative designed to give users more control over who sees their status updates, photos and other personal information.
Among the major changes: Users can control whether posts are publicly available on the web, viewable only by friends of friends, or only by their immediate friends. Facebook has also removed regional networks and limited the set of data third-party applications have access to.
In a special page about the changes, the company offered users some guidance on best practices for privacy. “We recommend everyone be able to see information that will make it easier for friends to find, identify and learn about you. … Some information is more personal, so we recommend friends of friends be able to see that type of info,” including birthday, hometown, photos and videos users have been tagged in.
Extremely personal information like cell numbers and e-mail addresses should be limited to users’ friends, the company said, although the wisdom of posting phone numbers on Facebook at all is debatable.
What is Public?
In one of the more controversial new polices, Facebook has altered its definition of what information will be publicly available, with little to nothing users can do about it. This includes a user’s profile picture, friends list, fan pages, gender, geographic region, and networks.
While this information may appear to be general enough that it doesn’t present security problems, the Electronic Frontier Foundation has strongly criticized it, noting, for example, that someone who chooses to be a fan of a pro-gay-marriage organization or a sex-toys…