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
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