Facebook's new privacy settings

Facebook announced new privacy settings to address some of the negative public backlash they received these last few weeks. Your name, profile picture and gender will remain publicly available but you can set privacy controls for the rest. The new privacy features will be rolled out during the next few weeks.

Video: How to take advantage of Facebook's new privacy settings



They've definitely made it easier for the end-user to change the privacy levels by adding global settings and the fact that you can now opt-out of applications altogether will be good news to those who demand absolute control over their privacy. Just a pity you don't have the option (when applying the setting to disable all applications) to exclude applications you actually want to use. Maybe that will come in future.

Step in right direction

A lot of people will be pleased with the new privacy settings but some privacy advocates will still have a problem with Facebook's general lacklustre approach to Privacy. Instead of thinking it through and respecting the user's privacy from the start, Facebook tend to expose their users by decreasing their privacy and then they simply fix it later, if the public outcry warrants it.

Sharing your personal info with 3rd party applications should be OPT-IN, not opt-out! As long as I have the choice to decide beforehand to share information or not, everything is fine. Just don't share it without my permission.

Related links
Making Control Simple - Facebook (CEO Mark Zuckerberg)
Controlling how you share - Facebook Read more on "Facebook's new privacy settings"!

Privacy concerns with Facebook

When I joined Facebook I felt comfortable sharing personal information because Facebook's privacy settings were very good, allowing the user to fully control every bit of information you publish to Facebook. But times have changed! Facebook has changed direction and privacy seems to be a mere afterthought now.

Facebook started off with an attitude of respecting the user's privacy, which was great. Unfortunately they have changed their privacy settings over time to make it increasingly difficult to protect everything you publish on Facebook.

Facebook's privacy changes in April - frowned upon

Their latest privacy changes (announced at Facebook's F8 conference in April) were frowned upon by most analysts. It's almost as if Facebook does not listen to their users at all, ignoring any backlash after a major privacy update.

Facebook's new Instant Personalization Pilot Program lets you share your information with third party websites... I'm not comfortable with that at all. Facebook always seem to make the changes regardless of whether their users like it or not and users only find out afterwards, once it's already been done. Then those who are concerned about their privacy have to quickly jump around and "fix" the privacy settings (again) but it's getting more and more difficult to do that.

Opting out

Case in point, I was logged into my Facebook account and then visited another website Engadget (or it could have been Mashable, can't remember), then Facebook granted access to apps from those sites automatically. I then visited my Facebook Applications Settings page and that website was already listed there! At no point did I give explicit permission to share information with external sites. Facebook gladly did that "on my behalf". I had to manually visit the Facebook application page for that site and block the application explicitly. So they're making it tougher to 'opt-out' as time goes by.

Facebook is feature-rich but please respect my privacy

Facebook makes sharing info with friends a pleasure and there's a multitude of other fantastic features that the social networking site offers. But a lot of users are uninformed about Facebook's persistent drive to open everything up for all to see, since that will obviously have financial benefit for Facebook due to marketers having access to your info/preferences for better advertising revenue.

The flip side of the coin is that it's perhaps convenient for the user to visit different websites and always be recognised on those websites since you're already logged in to your Facebook account. The part that I have a problem with... is the fact that I'm having less and less of a CHOICE in the matter. I'd prefer to opt-out beforehand instead of trying to solve a privacy issue afterwards.

Instructions on how to protect your privacy after Facebook's latest privacy changes in April

Opt out of Facebook's Open Graph personalization - WikiHow
Opt out of Facebook's Open Graph personalization - AllFacebook
How To Opt-Out Of Facebook’s Instant Personalization - Electronic Frontier Foundation

With Twitter the situation is different because you know from the start that everything is public, so you (should) only make statements you are willing to make in public anyway. But with Facebook there's a trust that was initially established between Facebook and the user, based on the initial strict privacy settings that was available. That trust is now being tampered with.

If Facebook loosen up their privacy settings to such a degree where I'm left without any control over the (access to) information I publish on Facebook, I'll have no choice but to consider closing my account.

Facebook plans privacy summit

It was announced today that Facebook will be holding a privacy summit after a large group of users, critics and lawmakers showed their dissatisfaction about the growing Facebook privacy issues. I hope something positive comes out of this because Facebook is a great social networking platform, if the privacy issues are addressed.

Video: Funny look at what Facebook would be like if played out in real life



Related links
How to Keep Your Privacy Safe(r) on Facebook - PCWorld
Facebook: Confirm or Deny? - TechNewsWorld
Are you a victim? - MyBroadband Read more on "Privacy concerns with Facebook"!

Live event: Introducing the iPad - Apple's CEO Steve Jobs

Leo Laporte from Twit.tv covering the event - live video feed



Also see gdgt live for transcript and photos of the event.

Steve Jobs with the Apple iPad

Video: Apple iPad hands on



Related links
Full specs of the iPad - Apple
Apple's iPad: What you need to know - CNET Read more on "Live event: Introducing the iPad - Apple's CEO Steve Jobs"!

Facebook's new privacy settings

The new Facebook privacy settings were activated today. I just amended mine and I'm not impressed, clearly a lot less privacy than before!

What I like

Some of the settings have been combined and it's a lot simpler now. Convenient.

What I don't like

I've never had a problem with Facebook's privacy settings before, simply because the user always had the option to set a specific privacy setting for just about everything. However, with today's new privacy settings, a lot of those options have simply been removed which means as a user you now have less control over what is made public.

You don't have the option to hide your Friends List from Search anymore; that setting has simply been removed altogether, which means the list is now public. I'm sure Facebook will get a huge backlash on this issue alone!

You can now disable your Friends List from being displayed on your Profile page but then the people currently on your Friends List can't see it either, so it's not a good workaround. If someone finds your Facebook profile via Google search, they can now see random friends from your Friends List at first glance. There are several reasons why people would want to hide their Friends List from the public - There must be millions of divorcees who don't want their ex's to see the list to perhaps avoid the possibility of harrassment, for example.

Now you can't hide the Pages you're a fan of, from the public either. This is less of a worry to me since I only belong to a few music pages but then again some users may be fans of some sensitive Pages and the public can now see which Pages they belong to. Zero privacy.

People use Facebook for different reasons

For me it's mostly a tool to stay in touch with my real friends out there and share things about my life only with them and nobody else. It's personal. That goes out the window if the public can see that information too, especially if I have no option to set it to private anymore.

I expect a lot of people who use Facebook for the same reason I do, will now be forced to remove a lot of information from their Facebook profiles which sort of defeats the purpose of using the social network in the first place.

There has always been a huge concern over the so-called third party applications that is used on Facebook, since once you decide to use these applications, they have access to your profile information. Previously it was possible to control to a certain extent how much of this information was made available to the applications. Those API settings have now (seemingly) been removed too. I've never given access to third party applications anyway since it's a waste of my time and because I feel uncomfortable with the idea that some developer out there now have access to all my info. A lot of people who use those applications will now have to accept the fact that their personal information is at risk of being abused by those third parties. No thanks!

The rest of the new privacy settings seem OK... from what I'v seen so far. I'll update this page if I notice anything substantial.

Twitter

I use Twitter as well but for completely different reasons than why I use Facebook. Twitter by design is public, so I tweet about things that are (hopefully) in public interest. Comments about new technology or 'discussing' new trends with other people on Twitter, even if I don't know them. That's fine because there's no security necessary, since it's the same comments I could have made while sitting at a public venue.

Facebook for me is different. The comments I make there only apply to my friends and as such I need some guarantee that those comments are not public, even if the comments themselves are nothing to write home about. It's a matter of principle.

Simply put, Facebook has failed to provide users with the option to really control their privacy and that is simply unacceptable. All it means is I'll use Facebook a lot less than before (did you read that Mr Zuckerberg!). Read more on "Facebook's new privacy settings"!

Webby Awards - 10 Best internet moments of the decade

The Webby Awards, an award for excellence on the internet, named their top 10 most influential internet moments during the last decade:

• Craigslist  - Online classified site expands outside SFO (2000)
• Launch of Google AdWords (2000)
• Launch of online encyclopedia Wikipedia (2001)
• Shutdown of Napster, a file-sharing site (2001)
• Google's IPO (2004)
• Online video revolution - led by YouTube (2006)
• Facebook and Twitter launches (2006)
• Apple's iPhone (2007)
• Use of the Internet in the US presidential campaign (2008)
• Use of Twitter during the Iranian election protests (2009)

Video - Highlights of Online Webby Awards 2009

Read more on "Webby Awards - 10 Best internet moments of the decade"!

My Facebook profile gives Page Not Found error

I noticed a strange problem today; when I access my own Facebook profile page, it says "The page you requested was not found". Huh?

I can log in to my FB account, view my friends' profiles, see myself in the listings if I do a search for my name but if I click on the actual profile link, I get that error message. When I type in the full web address for my facebook profile, I also get the error. Never had this problem before.

Previously, when I loaded my FB profile, e.g. www.facebook.com/username it would re-route to en-gb.facebook.com/username which I found strange since I'm not in Great Britain (or perhaps it's because I have the language set as "English (UK)"), but at least it worked. Now when I type the address in, it stays www.facebook.com/username but gives the error. When I log in to www.facebook.com my personal information that usually appears on the left and my list of uploaded photo albums are gone too.

Maybe it's a temporary propagation error? I didn't change any settings anywhere. I'm hoping it's just a temporary problem which will automatically be resolved soon.

Anyone else getting this error when they try and view their own Facebook profile?
So far I've not had any luck in getting any feedback from the FB Helpdesk on this matter.

UPDATE 27 AUGUST 2009
My profile is fixed. I reported it to Facebook, not sure if they acted on it but a week after I first experienced the problem, it just went away and my profile is visible again.

UPDATE 7 OCTOBER 2009
More people are experiencing this problem today, than back in August when I had the problem. I suggest you report the profile "Page Not Found" problem directly to Facebook as well, via this online form which was set up for this specific problem.

Alternatively, you can also try the Facebook profile bug report form. The more people submit, the more they have to take the problem seriously.

You can also add your comments about this problem on the last page of this thread at the Facebook Help Centre. Read more on "My Facebook profile gives Page Not Found error"!

Why you should use Twitter

The bombings in Mumbai in Nov '08 and the crash landing in the Hudson river in Jan '09 were first reported on a social networking service called Twitter before the mainstream media picked it up. This caught my attention and I started reading about Twitter. Initially I thought it was just a silly excuse to send irrelevant messages into cyberspace. Fluffy messages sent by bored people to keep themselves busy. Well, even though I'm sure there are people like that out there, the bottom line is that after some more digging on Twitter, it became clear that it offered so much more! The only way to determine the value of this service was to try it, so I decided to sign up.

Twitter enables its users to send and read other users' updates (called "tweets"), which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length. Updates are displayed on the user's profile page and delivered to other users who have signed up to receive them. You can also send links to website addresses in your message. If the hyperlink is too long, it will shorten it automatically when you send the message, using an automated substitute shorter URL instead.



The first obvious advantage is that it's an easy way to stay in touch with friends and colleagues. A few other advantages:

• Provide comments during live events, on the fly
• Share ideas with people who have a common interest
• Stay on top of current affairs
• Share and receive useful links to articles online
• See what your friends are up to
• Being able to choose whose comments you read
• You can send and read messages from your cell phone
  
• It's fun
• If you're a blogger, there a few other advantages as well.

Following users and a few commands

If you want to receive a friend's Twitter messages in your feed, you must add that person first. It's called "following". To follow a user, visit the user's Twitter profile page e.g. www.twitter.com/GlobetrotterSA (yes, that's me) and simply click on "Follow" under the person's username. Any messages posted by that user will now start appearing in your Twitter feed on the homepage at www.twitter.com (if you're logged in).

If you want to write a reply to someone specifically, then start the message with @, follow it immediately with the person's Twitter username and the message. For example:
@GlobetrotterSA Check out U2's latest album.
would send that message to the user GlobetrotterSA's reply window but everyone who is following GlobetrotterSA will also be able to read the message. It's like addressing someone specifically in a group discussion. You can also send a reply by right-clicking on the message in the feed and choosing the 'reply' option.

If you want to send a direct message to a specific user, without anyone else being able to read it, then you type d username message (e.g. d GlobetrotterSA See you at 8).

There are also other commands you can use when you write your tweet (Twitter message).

Twitter applications and services I use (free)

Twitterfox
Twitterfox is an add-on for Firefox browser users which allows you to send tweets, replies and read all the tweets in your feed in a little popup window in the corner of the browser window, without having to visit the Twitter website. Very practical! I also subscribe to a few news twitter feeds which helps me stay on top of current affairs since I see snippets of the latest news stories throughout the day without having to leave the browser window or tab I'm currently working in.

Twim
If you're using a cell phone with a Symbian operating system (mostly Nokia phones), you can use the Twim freeware Java client to send and read Twitter messages on your cell phone. It works well, provides an easy-to-understand interface and does not use a lot of bandwidth. Now you can tweet on the go! :)
(There are several Twitter clients for cell phones e.g. Twitterfon fir iPhones, just make sure you find the correct client application which is suited for your specific phone brand and model)

Hashtags
Hashtags add additional context to your tweets. If you want to send a tweet about a specific topic that may already be discussed by other users on Twitter, it's useful to add a hashtag to your tweet so other anonymous users (twitters) can easily find the message, if they wanted to. A hashtag is always preceded by #.
Example message: The Springboks rugby union team thrashed the opposition today #Springboks
The hashtag used here is #Springboks and if you search for #Springboks on Twitter, you will find all the related tweets from other users who used the same #hashtag to group the discussion.

Twimailer
Every time you add a user to your Twitter feed, therefore "following" that user, that user receives an automated email to inform that person you're following him/her (this function can be enabled/disabled in the settings under Notifications on the Twitter site). However, this email only mentions the Twitter username and nothing more.

The Twimailer service adds useful information to this email; like the person's profile info, how many users are following them, how many he/she follows and the last ten tweets the person sent. If a lot of people "follow" you on Twitter, this functionality helps in deciding whether you want to follow that person or not, since you hopefully have enough information in front of you to make that decision, without having to visit that user's Twitter feed on the site.

TweetBeep
Keep track of conversations that mention you, anything, with hourly or daily updates. You can also keep track of who's tweeting about your website or blog, even if they use a shortened URL. Bloggers may find TweetBeep useful since it will help them determine their blog's popularity.

Twitter Search
This is Twitter's own search function.

Monitter
This website allows you to enter up to three keywords and then displays all the tweets that contain that keyword in realtime. This provides an easy way to follow any topic or news story that is currently being discussed.

Twitscoop
If you want to see which buzzwords are hot on Twitter right now, visit the Twitscoop site.

Other Twitter applications and services

There are a lot of applications and services that enhance the use of Twitter to cater for your specific needs. Here's a few lists:

Big list of Twitter tools
How journalists can master Twitter
Twenty-Six Twitter Tools To Track Tweets
15 Handpicked Twitter Tools

If I come across any other useful Twitter applications that is not mentioned here, I'll update the list. Feel free to share your own Twitter tools/suggestions in the Comments section.

Lastly, you are welcome to follow me on Twitter. :)
Read more on "Why you should use Twitter"!