Posts tagged Privacy
“One can never be surprised by Facebook’s default security/privacy settings…Check your Places’ Privacy settings, quick before they actually turn it on!”
Considering all the attention Facebook has received lately as it relates to privacy, this may be straw that broke the camel’s back, at least for yours truly (please click the title to read the full article if you have not already). What use are security settings if Facebook and the like are going to send YOUR personal information to advertisers (paying a pretty penny I am sure) regardless of YOUR explicit intent NOT to share that information?
Would you do business with a business if they regularly shared your very personal information to the highest bidder? Absolutely NOT!!! Therein lies the problem…Users of Facebook, et al are NOT doing business with them. They are using a FREE service with a poor advertising model that is not paying the bills, apparently. So these social media site have very little choice but to exploit the very users that made them so popular.
So what are our options? Well, you can always quit Facebook (which is not a very easy thing to do, by the way: See an earlier post for specific details on how to completely delete your account). Personally, I am closer than ever to quitting Facebook, but to be completely honest, I like keeping up with all my friends on Facebook (yep, I said it…I am a bit of a Facebook junkie). So the next obvious option, in my humble opinion, is for Facebook to offer a pay for service model that guarantees users that their privacy settings are truly PRIVATE. I am not sure this model would be successful, but establishing a true business relationship might be the only leverage Facebook users will ever get as it relates to privacy. Until then I am afraid we are at the mercy of Facebook and they have made it abundantly clear that they don’t have ANY regard for anyone’s personal data stored on the site.
Its one thing to knowingly let the world know your whereabouts via Twitter, Foursquare, and the like but it is a completely different story when your social networking application shares all your contacts with the world including stats on who you email most often.
This is exactly why I shut down Google Buzz. I might be willing to share quite a bit, but even I have limits.
Thanks to Lewis Shepard (@lewisshepherd) and Adriel Hampton (@adrielhampton) for sharing this article via Twitter.
