Facebook privacy change angers campaigners

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Facebook privacy change angers campaigners

Facebook has outraged civil liberties campaigners after introducing new privacy settings that could dramatically increase the amount of personal information people expose online.

Privacy groups including the American Civil Liberties Union railed against the changes to the world's largest social network yesterday, calling the developments "flawed" and "worrisome".

The changes – first announced in July, and trailed again last week - finally began taking place on Wednesday. The site's 350m users are now being given the chance to alter settings on items they upload to the site, such as photographs and videos, but all of their status updates are now automatically made public unless specified otherwise.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a group that campaigns for the rights of internet users, said that while some of the changes were beneficial to the site's worldwide audience, others were "plain ugly".

"These new 'privacy' changes are clearly intended to push Facebook users to publicly share even more information than before," Kevin Bankston, a senior attorney with the EFF, wrote on the organisation's blog. "Even worse, the changes will actually reduce the amount of control that users have over some of their personal data."

Nicole Ozer, the ACLU's technology and civil liberties policy director, said that the "discourage or eliminate" certain important privacy settings.

"Before the recent changes, you had the option of exposing only a "limited" profile, consisting of as little as your name and networks, to other Facebook users—and nothing at all to internet users at large," she said.

"Now your profile picture, current city, friends list, gender, and fan pages are 'publicly available information', which means you have no way to prevent any other Facebook user from viewing this information on your profile".

Facebook said that the changes were intended to give users more control over their information and not to endanger their privacy.

"You will have the opportunity to customise even individual pieces of content when you upload a picture or a video," Elliot Schrage, the company's vice president of global communications, said.

"If you want to share a photo with just your family, you could do that as well. It is much more straightforward."

The privacy changes were themselves spurred by complaints from Canada's privacy watchdog.

The move comes just days after Google announced that it would be including some updates from the social network in its search index, with plans to incorporate more information in the future. Facebook already shares more information with Bing, the rival search engine operated by Microsoft – which in turn owns around 1.5% of Facebook.

It also comes after thousands of users were invited to join a $9.5m class action settlement over privacy breaches relating to the company's controversial Beacon advertising programme that surfaced two years ago.

The company has not commented directly on the accusations, but Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg had previously said that the company realised different users had different requirements.

"The best way for you to find the right settings is to read through all your options and customize them for yourself," he told users in a message last week, "I encourage you to do this and consider who you're sharing with online."



Bobbie Johnson, San Francisco
Thursday 10 December 2009 06.42 GMT
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2009
 
I logged on to FB few minutes before coming on here and got the screen on first of all before you can do anything else that gives you the option of the NEW settings or keeping the OLD PRIVATE settings where you must be friends to see detail.
So unless you opt for the new settings i can't see why the fuss.
 
I logged on to FB few minutes before coming on here and got the screen on first of all before you can do anything else that gives you the option of the NEW settings or keeping the OLD PRIVATE settings where you must be friends to see detail.
So unless you opt for the new settings i can't see why the fuss.

I saw this too, but one of the options was not automatically on "old settings", so it needed changing. (IIRC, it was email and addy?)
 
You have to log in, go to settings, privacy settings, search and untick indexing.
 
i no longer have 1 so doesnt bother me but people should have more control on own settings for different things such as pics status updates etc...i used 2 have alot in limited and also my own limited list for family and kids so they couldnt see certain pics or swearing on my status lol
 
Facebook will automatically index all your info on Google, which allows everyone to view it. To change this option, go to Settings --> Privacy Settings --> Search --> then UN-CLICK the box that says 'Allow indexing'. Facebook kept this one quiet.
 
Thanks for the info on this guys. The Mrs is on this and she wouldn't know where to start with the privacy thing. :Cheers:
 
thanks guys, the miss uses face book all the time. and i dont think she would be happy every one seeing her private details.




"uk-wales"
 
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