ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ

The new privacy screen came up this morning, and it correctly picked up my custom privavcy settings. I'm firmly in the whispering camp, and had my profile locked up tighter than my boss's wallet on a works night out.

I will no doubt have to carefully pick through my girlfriends privacy settings tonight to ensure she doesn't unwittingly broadcast unwanted stuff to the entire internet. I'll have to do the same for my mum, my sisters, my aunts and friends who aren't very technical.

Setting a default of public for all information is outrageous.

The useful privacy setting is under the custom tab, whereby you can select details which can only be viewed by you yourself, effectively allowing them to be stored online but kept private.

The worrying aspect is that the default settings assume consent to share far too much, a problem which no doubt in the future will once more hit the press.

The choices available now are actually pretty good, just poorly implemented. I welcome the ability to control exactly what profile information is displayed about me to someone searching for my name on the site, used properly it is a very useful feature.

I'm most definitely a broadcaster when it comes to both Twitter and Facebook.

However, I'm cautious of what I write when it comes to both networks. If you're not cautious about what goes in the 'What are you doing / What's Happening boxes' then I guess that's your own fault. If you don't want the world to see what you're up to, don't publish it.

I'm not sure Facebook will ever be a 'private' place.

I'm a whisperer.

I was late to Facebook, and rightly made every effort to safeguard my privacy when I joined it. I'm surprised that other people don't seem to be so diligent.

Still, it takes all sorts, I guess. =o)

I'm a broadcaster. I agree with James Branch -- just use your head about what you post, if you don't want something embarrassing or otherwise harmful to you to be spread across the world.

I enjoy Twitter much less now that it seems it's following the Facebook model of sharing your tweets with just a select group of followers. I know there is a public feed but it's not the default page when you go to Twitter. When I used Twitter a few years ago, I really enjoyed the feeling that I was having a conversation with the whole world, not just some narrow little group of hand-picked confidantes.

If you want to keep something private, why are you talking on the web?

Am neither - I share various things with various people: be in holiday photos or pictures from a nightout. I'm a customiser and I have to admit that the Facebook settings are very easy to customise to exactly what I want.

If people have issues with privacy settings, maybe they are the ones who should get off Facebook & the like. I'm, personally, sick and tired of organisations like Facebook getting the blame for people's idiocy.

I'm a little of both, to be honest. Sometimes I want to shout out loud and let people know what I'm doing and things about yet, but sometimes I want things to be kept secret too.

It's hard on something like Facebook to do that.

But as stated before, if you don't want some one to know something, then don't put it on there to begin with.

A second point. These changes were trailed. For about 4 days last week, there was an annoying grey box at the top of my newsfeed when I logged in advising me to read Mark Zuckerberg's "Open Letter" regarding upcoming privacy changes. I got so bored with the grey box that I read the letter so I could remove the box!

Now there seems to be a big fuss about the changes. Why? They've been trailed. They've been pre-announced. Why the fuss now?

I'm both.

Facebook is for friends, and very firmly so.

Twitter is for everyone.

Yes, it is possible to use two different services for different audiences. Facebook trying to 'compete' with Twitter is pointless and doing nothing more than p***ing off users who just want to keep in touch with friends and not broadcast information all over the Internet.

In the relentless search for revenue, Facebook is steamrolling its users into doing something they *simply do not want to do* with their profiles and information.

I can't point to a single active user out of my 500+ Facebook friends who wants to actively wants to share their content with anyone other than their friends - so why "nudge" them towards it??

The fact such a change in a website's policy makes such a top news bulletin is ridiculous to me. The fact is Facebook is a website, like the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ's website, Man Utd's website, Google's etc... They all have individual privacy policies. In the case of facebook because it's used by such a wide audience, with the primary intention broadcasting your life effectively - if you don't like it, don't use it but I don't see what's the big problem with Facebook adjusting to meet up with the new and updated Google search. It's called progression, every website on the internet is constantly progressing and they need to to keep up.

The majority here complaining are the people that will always complain, will believe that any privacy change is for the worse because they don't understand the full story. Facebook wouldn't change their privacy if they didn't need to, and it's not as if they're asking you for your bank account info and broadcasting that information - I don't fully understand what everyone has to hide - or perhaps this two-faced society is so entrenched now.

Always encouraging to see a technology correspondent so conversant with online life and issues that they've never checked their privacy settings ;)

ZOMG! With all the talk about Facebook privacy settings this morning you'd think that is was the END OF THE WORLD! I logged on today, it took me straight to the screen to confirm/update my privacy settings and you know what? They were exactly the same as I'd left them before! Imagine that?!

It took my 5 mins first time round to customise, it's really not hard or difficult to understand. Am happy for people to be able to find my profile through facebook/google ect but unless you're on my friend list you can't see anything beyond my profile pic, current location and friend list. I even have a "limited" friend list, where certain info is blocked from certain people.

A lot of hysteria about nothing. It's your profile, you set it up how you want, if you leave everything public then so be it.

I have plenty of friends who use Twitter under lock, so only certain people can read their tweets. My own twitter account has been locked and unlocked at various times since I started using it. We certainly feel there's a point to being on Twitter without "being prepared to 'broadcast'".

I don't use Facebook much, but when I signed up for it (not too long ago) I spent a lot of time looking at the available privacy options and choosing the settings that suited me. I found the complexity of the options off-putting and am pleased that Facebook has simplified the system - but disappointed that they feel the need to try to push users in the direction of making more content public. That's even more off-putting to me, and makes me less inclined to use the site than ever.

I'm firmly in the whispering camp. The privacy settings have never been hard to find - there's a Settings link top right, which drops down a menu containing three options - Account settings, Privacy settings, and Application settings.

From Privacy settings, it's fairly easy to navigate to what aspect of Facebook you want to customise the privacy settings for, and you have the standard Everyone / Friends of Friends / Friends options.

For the more adventurous, you can delve into Custom settings, and specify individual friends / friend lists who can / cannot view the information.

Ideally, they should have short tutorials on how to use these advanced settings to 'walk through' newbies, and demonstrate they're not as scary as people may think.

Friend lists are a brilliant innovation, which again are relatively poorly documented. They allow you to group friends together for the purposes of filtering news feed messages and, crucially, privacy settings. So for example, I have "Family", "Work" and "Uni" lists, plus extra lists for the various internet social circles I'm in. Oh, and I think friends can be in multiple lists simultaneously. I don't know whether it gives such friends the most or least generous access from the lists...

Needless to say, 99% of my profile is set to be viewable by friends and subsets of friends only - with only my name and profile picture visible to the outside world. But since there are dozens of other people sharing my name on the site, you've pretty much got to know me to find me :)

i customised my settings when i joined facebook. honestly it's not hard! i don't understand why it's a big deal...or why some people don't do it.

i'm something in the middle ground between whisperer and broadcaster...i put my settings so that only my friends can see my profile, my photos and everything, but anyone can find me in a search (hey i can always block someone if they start hasseling me or something!)

but i'm also careful about what i post on there, you never know if a future employer might see it so it makes sense to be careful! like james branch i don't understand why anyone would not be!

One Facebook friend was not impressed:

"As far as I see it, profile pic, friend lists, pages - and a few other 'insignificant' details, ie, status & sexuality are now on view to EVERYONE - and I've not found away to hide these, other than by deleting the information from your actual profile."

This did not please my friend. "I'm a teacher & we're supposed to hide our profiles from current students."

=====

I think your friend needs to check the privacy settings again. It is possible to have more control over details than was shown in the pop-up box.

Within the Privacy Settings, the Profile Information page allows the user to restrict visibility of: About Me, Personal Info, Birthday, Religious and political views, Family and Relationships (including relationship status and sexual orientation, Posts by me (including status updates), Posts by others, and Comments on posts.

As far as i can tell, the basic details that cannot be individually restricted are: Name, profile picture, networks, gender, friends list, pages list (not entirely sure why this is here). However, a user can prevent people from finding their profile via the Search page in Privacy Settings (Everyone, Friends and Networks, Friends of Friends, Friends Only)

All facebook have done is to suggest that people make their settings equal to the most common setting of those who have ever changed them in the first place.

I don't what the fuss is. If you don't want to share information, don't use facebook. And why would people want to share personal information such as age, sex ,potos etc on a webpage beats me. Surely at the most you only want your friends to see that information?

It is outragious that everyones settings have been set to 'everyone' by default.

I am most definitely on the 'whisper' camp.

Most people will have previously listed information etc. on their info page that may have been listed as 'friends only' but is now out there for the world to see, from telephone numbers to religious views etc.

Check it out, go to a 'friend' and click on one of their friends you don't know and if they haven't logged on in the past 24 hours you will be able to see all this info along with embarrasing photographs etc.

Surely it should have been the other way round with it set automatically to 'Friends Only' and not 'Everyone', or is that using too much common sense?

I'm a mixture of whisperer & broadcaster. Most of my Facebook updates I make via Twitter. My Twitter account is in a pseudonym, but is globally visible. My facebook account is locked down to just my friends, so that you can't even find me in search. I'm appalled at this idea that certain information has been declared Publically Available Information - this information is stuff I would keep very close to my chest & would be the first step for an identity thief to get hold of it. I for one will be changing my Facebook name to another, unconnected pseudonym, as I do not want my privacy messed about with or my identity stolen.

Like many others, I am a teacher who uses facebook. I already have pretty tight privacy settings so that the children can't see my profile, friends, pictures etc. However, I will be going through them very carefully again now.It worries me that Facebook may be trying to 'trick' people into having their profiles more visible to all. This is my private life, I dont want the children knowing more about it than I do!

You claim that there are 2 types of people - you've missed one ! I am a happy neo-luddite - I have no wish to tell the world that I am just making a cup of tea or that my Granny's cat's name is 'Fred' - I have not signed up for Facebook, Bebo etc. As a paranoid, I worry that someone, somewhere is storing and using this information. Data (and sites) are only secure until you discover that they have been compromised, by which time it is too late !!
Thought Police rule !

I’m with post 1 who said β€œSetting a default of public for all information is outrageous.”

I’m unhappy with the way this is being done; it’s not transparent to users what the new suggested settings really mean or why they’re being implemented, quite the opposite. This is what monetization means.

Many that don’t read tech. news etc will accept thinking that they’re keeping their old settings, not that FB wants to change them so info becomes open to search engines.
I also noticed that Zuckenberg’s letter vanished as soon as the changes were implemented.

I’d suggest that people go through their FB settings and then Google their name +Facebook to check what appears.
As always I never put anything in my profile I wouldn’t be happy for, say, people I work with knowing; but I should also have the right to choose who I share that information with.

I’d also suggest posting this blog post (or similar article) in your status to alert friends.

I dislike facebook. I use rarely because of precisely the privacy. I receive a lot of rubbish: pseudofriends activities. I really dont care what these people are doing.
I began to participate in a forum and I saw that my activities are being send to other people (??!!) what for? I never received any question about if I wanted this, but it looks I receive information of other people and my activities are being sent to other in the list of "friends" (people that want to be in my list just to increase their number of friends in list (quite odd).
That is why au revoir facebook

Just recently, a BING bar has appeared at the top of the MSN home page that comes up after I log out from hotmail. Although I've never written anything in this space, when I scroll the page down, my previous searches for FACEBOOK friends is revealed. Is FACEBOOK sharing its info with MSN and BING? Its very disturbing that this kind of personal information is being distributed without permission or even notification. Maybe its time to ditch FACEBOOK. After all, you don't really need it to stay in touch with REAL friends.....

Personally I don't do Facebook....However my X husband who was divorced on the grounds of abandonning his wife & children was "found" on there by a friend..laughing at the camera in a famous London place looking like he didnt have a care in the world.....good job, flashy sports car, private gym membership....there he was contacting all the old gang...whom Im sure dont no the truth, what his devastating lies have done..that he hasnt had contact with his children in 4 years & doesnt pay a penny, despite court orders towards their basic needs....
However what hurt me more was that his sister, an ACCREDITED MEDIATOR, working in the local government named me on her facebook saying that she longed for the day to learn I had suffered a slow, painfull death & that my mother would follow shortly...

IS THIS ALLOWED?

I've had my privacy settings very tight for a while now. I noticed some time ago that photo albums are defaulted to "everyone", that's not good.

One thing I really like about today's change though is the preview button. I've created dummy accounts in the past just so I could see what my profile looks like to somebody that wasn't a friend, don't have to do that anymore so FB get some points for that.

My solution is to make sure Facebook (and other internet stuff) only has the bare minimum of information on me so that even if it does leak, it's not too much of a problem. It's got a custom contact email address, my internet birthday (which is not the same as my real one) and my school/university details in case anyone from that far back wants to find me. All applications are banned and I only post stuff that I'm prepared to allow into the wider world anyway. If you don't want the world to know, don't post it anywhere!

Nice division, Rory.

Most definitely a whisperer, and couldn't care about the broadcasters, as the majority have very little of interest to say in the first place!

"No, me neither, and I have to confess that I had some trouble finding them when I set out to look. And I'm by no means unusual."

I know, I mean who would have thought you'd get to privacy settings by clicking on settings and then privacy settings? Crazy!!!

Interesting distinction. Facebook could be a place for both, but the new changes are making it hard to be anything but a broadcasters, even though Facebook spun this "privacy" rollout as a way to give users more tools to control their information. We go through some of the biggest problems on our blog at

We also have a Facebook transition resource page to help users understand the details of what has changed and get tips on how to maintain as much privacy as possible:

- ACLU of Northern California

NEW FACEBOOK SETTINGS ARE A STALKERS DREAM!!!!! GO THROUGH YOUR FRIENDS..TO GET TO YOU!!!! BEFORE WE COULD HIDE AND PROTECT OUR FRIENDS AND FAMILY!!!!! ARE YOU PEOPLE CRAZY??????

THE EVERYONE SETTING IS NOT THE ISSUE!!!! THE OPEN FRIENDS SETTING,,BEING EXPOSED TO THE ENTIRE WORLD, IS A STALKERS DREAM!!!! YOU CAN CLOSE AND HIDE YOUR FRIENDS ON YOUR PAGE, BIG DEAL!!! GOOGLE SHOWS THEM MAND STALKERS CAN USE YOUR FRIENDS BEFRIEND UNAWARE FRIENDS!!! AND, GET TO YOU!!! I HAD MY PAGE SET SO MY FRIENDS WERE HIDDEN, SO NO ONE COULD GET TO THEM. I CHECKED GOOGLE, IT SHOWS THEM!!!! REGARDLESS OF MY ACTUAL SITE SETTINGS!!! LOOKS LIKE FACEBOOK SCREWED US, INTENTIONALLY!!! ALLOWING OUR FRIENDS TO BE A LINK TO US REGARDLESS!!! FOR WOMEN, IT'S EXTREMELY DANGEROUS!!! WOULD I WANT SOMEONE, SEEING MY FAMILY, MOM, GIRLFRIEND ECT. ON MY FRIENDS LIST??? NO!!! IT SHOULD, IF WE CHOOSE, JUST SHOW A MAIL AND ADD LINK!!!! NO FRIENDS SHOWING, UNLESS AUTHORIZED!!! I FIND IT HARD TO BELIEVE FB DIDN'T KNOW THIS!!! BS!!! FINE, WE WILL CLOSE OUR ACCOUNTS!!! CAUSE YOU WON'T STALK MY FFRIENDS..TO GET TO ME, OR MY GIRL!!!



THE PREVIOUS SETTINGS DIDN'T SHOW YOUR FRIENDS!!!! ONLY ADD LINK OR MESSAGE LINK, AND PHOTO!! THAT'S IT!!!!!!! IF PRIVATE!!!

GOOGLE IS ALSO IN VIOLATION, NOT RESPECTING ANOTHER SITES CONTROLS...JUMPING OVER THEM TO SHOW FRIENDS LIST, IS A PRIVACY AND SAFETY ISSUE!!! I'D EXPECT BOTH SITE CAN BE SUED FOR CAUSING THIS DANGEROUS SITUATION!!! IF I HIDE MY FRIENDS, ON MY PAGE.. I EXPECT WHEN I GOOLE MY SITE TO SEE THE STTINGS I PLACED ON MY PAGE!!! SO FACEBOOK IS NOT ALLOWING US TO HIDE OUR FRIENDS FROM A PUBLIC VIEW!!! WE DON'T WANT TWITTER!!!!! FOLLOWERS SHOW REGADLESS!!! FB IS A PRIVATE SITE. I FEEL VIOLATED!!!! I HOPE SOMEONE DOESN'T GET HURT BECAUSE THESE MORONS USE US...TO MAKE MONEY!!!

FACEBOOK USE US!!!!! THEN SOLD US OUT!!!!!! IF SOMEONE GETS HURT, IT'S ON YOU MARK!!!!!!!!!

As someone who has always tightly locked down my FB profile to "friends only", I'm dismayed by these changes which make my previously private information public, with no option to hide the info. I refer to profile photo, list of friends, and pages (that I'm a fan of).

Even if I remove myself from search (which rather defeats the idea of being on FB), it doesn't work because if someone stumbles across my name in a friends list, all this info is still on public view. Although it is possible to remove my friends list from my profile, this would mean even my friends can no longer view my friends list (not something I'd want). The only way to prevent the (fan) pages being publicly displayed, is to cease being a fan of those pages (thus reducing the value of being on FB).

So to go back to my previous privacy settings for my public profile (ie name only on display), I'd have to delete my profile photo, hide my friends list from my friends, and cease to be a fan of my chosen pages. You might then wonder what is the point of being on FB. And these are exactly my thoughts, so I'll be deleting my account within the next couple of weeks unless FB restores the privacy settings that we previously enjoyed.

Whilst I'm happy for my chosen friends to see my list of friends and pages I'm a fan of - I don't want the whole world to see them.

I wonder if the reason so few have is the same reason I didn't until this article jogged my memory--when the window popped up, I clicked to edit my settings, and got an error message.

#33

"So to go back to my previous privacy settings for my public profile (ie name only on display), I'd have to delete my profile photo, hide my friends list from my friends, and cease to be a fan of my chosen pages. You might then wonder what is the point of being on FB. And these are exactly my thoughts, so I'll be deleting my account within the next couple of weeks unless FB restores the privacy settings that we previously enjoyed."

You are correct. If you don't like the new settings, then delete everything and don't use it, it's simple!

Martyfly # 32: please don't shout at us. It's extremely rude and makes you sound unprofessional.

I don't really see what the big deal is. You access your privacy settings and you can set what other people can see or can't.

General details about me are open to everyone - for the basic reason that people should be able to find me who haven't already - otherwise what is the point.

Apart from that everything is set to only appear to friends.

I disagree that Facebook's settings are hidden away (Settings -> Privacy is about as obvious as you can get IMHO).

I agree that the prompt to check your privacy settings was dire - either what Facebook recommend or your old settings. A better approach would be to give several options with the current one already highlighted.

If you sign up to a social networking site, not even bother to look at your privacy settings, then complain about things like this, you've only got yourself to blame.

It's not like it's hard, hover over "Settings" at the top of the screen then click "Privacy settings". It's literally one click.

It's common sense, if you're putting details you only want certain people to see into a site, that you go into the privacy settings and ensure only those people can see it.

All I know is that the options as presented made no sense to me, and I had no clue as to what I was opting into or out of.

What were my old settings? View, or not?

For a pretty significant settings chart from an outfit who I'd have thought knew what they were doing, that seems... a shame.

Couldn't it have been phrased in a way that simply said 'here's what can or need not go up, you select: yes or no?'

I don't give a flying Zuckerberg what tribe some who have not enough to do in the day think I am, but if you monkey with stuff I'd suggest the default is set cautious and allow folk to tune upwards to taste

@JunkkMale - it told you what your old settings were, all you had to do was hover over the "Old settings" button for each option! Again, not hard is it?

From what I've observed (in what may be my final week on FB) friends lists are fast disappearing from profiles on FB, as members act to prevent their friends lists being made public (ie to non friends). To recap, the only way now to prevent your list of friends being shown to the world is to remove it from your profile. This means that even your friends can no longer see your other friends. I feel that this takes away a lot of the networking benefits that FB hitherto had, and is a road I personally don't want to go down - hence my decision to shortly leave FB.

I think FB have made a serious mistake with this one. They are trying to open it up to the world like Twitter - but it won't work with FB. On Twitter most people don't use their real name and adopt a handle, and are therefore quite happy to operate in an open public space and have anybody follow them. But on FB people are encouraged to use their real name, and their friends are much more likely to be real life friends. So people are therefore much more protective about what info they share with the internet at large (ie non friends). FB need to rethink this new lack of privacy policy which has upset so many people. It's been badly thought through and poorly implemented.

40. At 11:42am on 12 Dec 2009, MacBookPro wrote:
@JunkkMale - it told you what your old settings were, all you had to do was hover over the "Old settings" button for each option! Again, not hard is it?

Evidently, it was.

I recall telling a client once 'No, you are not understanding the layout very well,' to which he gently replied 'No, you have yet to make it clear enough for me'.

But it does conform to the 'If you don't understand what I want you to do it's not my fault but yours and I'll get my high horse on my shaky pedestal' school of look down and mock thought abounding these days.

Thanks for the tip, anyways. I'll see if it works next time. Don't recall any roll over last time. Maybe there was a glitch. I usually figure it's 'cos I use Safari on a Mac, but I'm guessing it might not cut it this time, all things considered:) As we all know, no errors can happen this way.

'Whisperer' sounds 'Curtain twitcherish' though of the 'broadcaster' and the 'whisperer' I have to say I am in the later group.

I am disgusted that Facebook would do this.

It's not as if they've just created the site and said 'These are the rules, this is what we'll do for you...'

Facebook gave us the impression that we'd always be safe on-line and we'd have privacy. They stored our information, and scattered it to the world when we least expected it.

This is problematic for Children aged 13 - 16, and those that have suffered at the hands of stalkers and other on-line predators.

Facebook made us safe, then exposed us to the wild.

I'm happy when I have the time to just search for other sites with better security and more fun, even if it's just a forum, and if my friends wish to join, then even better.

Believe it or not, there are actually many, many social net-work sites out there. Just not as big as Facebook, Myspace and Bebo... ... ... yet.

Rory:

I honestly like you, regarding the updated Facebook privacy settings.....

~Dennis Junior~

I am definately a whisperer on Facebook,

I am in a position, like teachers, where i cant be displaying any information deemed personal and such. Yet, my friends want me to have a presence on facebook so they keep in contact and i relented after reviewing Facebooks privacy settings at the time...

So therefore, i don't exist to anyone i havent invited to be a friend, i cant be searched with their people finder and my profile picture (just in case anyone sees me on a friends profile) is a blacked out photo.

On the other hand i havent joined Twitter at all because i fully EXPECT that to be a public area, so if Facebook wants to follow suit then i am more than happy to delete my account and remove all traces of my existence from their servers.
After all, that isnt what i signed up for

Another thing
@ 44 Dennis Junior - can you please translate that into something that makes sense please?

Does it mean that you were being serious when you said you liked Rory? If so, can you finish your sentence regarding the facebook privacy settings?