東西 | dongxi

In the past few weeks, techies and nerds have been abuzz about Facebook’s war against privacy, reflected in their continued changes in policy.  While some of that has been caught by the mainstream media, there’s still a large portion of the general population that find themselves unfamiliar with this controversy. So what is the deal?

In short, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, is under the firm belief that privacy no longer exists; what that means is all your info: your pictures, your likes, your friends, your habits, your conversations should be made available to the public (and to advertisers). Here’s some of the ways that has played out in Facebook’s recent updates:

1. Your info is defaulted to everyone. In the early days of Facebook, basic info such as your name, gender, profile pic was available to Facebook users or your local “network” which could be set to your school or city. Today, all your info (the only exception being your birthday), as well as all your photos, wall posts, friend lists, “likes,” etc. are available to the public, regardless of whether they have a Facebook account or not. Not only can your boss scan your wall to check to see if you’re on Facebook during office hours or making disparaging comments about the company, just about anyone can look in to check out your pics from spring break or who you’re friends with. Matt Mckeon has a great visualization of the change in your default privacy settings over time.

2. Facebook is actively integrating your personal info across the web (and to advertisers!). If you’ve been on sites such as Yelp and Pandora lately, you might have noticed messages that certain friends like certain songs or places. In fact, out of the recent f8 conference, Facebook announced the ability for third-party sites to now use your Facebook cookie (browser-stored data) info. So in effect, even if you don’t log-in directly, sites can actually identify you and broadcast info to your contacts based on your web behavior. You can tweak these settings, but it’s opt-out, which leads to yet another complaint.

3. Facebook keeps it opt-out and confusing. To adjust settings to keep your data private, you have to run around Facebook carefully checking out every box. Chances are, you will still miss a few boxes. This has been a long running contention with privacy advocates. Why is Facebook making it so hard to privatize your info? Simply because they don’t want you to! In fact, the New York Times just recently charted the absurdity of Facebook’s privacy settings; it’s official privacy policy is now longer than the U.S. Constitution! And if you want to delete your Facebook account? Good luck – it’s one of the top Google searches now, just given the sheer difficulty to find a “Cancel My Account” option. [WSJ]

4. Facebook is vulnerable. In an age of phishing attacks, scams, and internet fraud, Facebook is the Fort Knox of personal data thieves are drooling to get into. Just recently, a glitch was exposed where anyone can surf through status updates. [Gawker] At the end of the day, you have to ask, how much do you trust Facebook with your info?

While I’ve always been an advocate for using social networks to connect with people, there’s also a danger in oversharing and relying too much on these platforms. What is outrageous is that Facebook uses these “bait & switch” tactics, leading consumers in only to flip on entire policies, putting personal information out in the open, not for our benefit, but for Facebook’s ultimate goal of dominating the web landscape and making money.

Truth is, it’s very unlikely that any of us will actually leave Facebook (save for the most strong-willed out there); until then, unfortunately the work will have to come down to you, the user, to be active in knowing what Facebook is doing, and taking the necessary steps to protect yourself. Check out a few of the resources for more on Facebook:

Top Ten Reasons You Should Quit Facebook [Gizmodo]

How Facebook is putting its users last [CNET Molly Rants]

How to Quit Facebook Without Actually Quitting Facebook [Lifehacker]

Make Your Facebook Account Private [Wired]

Facebook Privacy Fail [SocentVC]