Facebook Privacy

So the big news now is that putting things up on Facebook might not be the absolute best way to keep things private. Now I can understand that there are reasonable concerns about what information Facebook has the right to distribute to people like advertisers and whoever they feel like but there is something about this hysteria that seems ridiculous. This issue has received so much attention that members of congress are threatening the company and asking them to change there privacy policies to opt in as opposed to opt out. This would mean that anytime Mark Z. (Facebook founder) wants to add a new feature or connection to another website he would need to ask you. For example right now if I am logged into Facebook and happen to go to CNN.com there is a neat little box at the right side that shows me any cnn articles my Facebook friends have recommended and published to their wall. This happens because the privacy features are opt out, so if my friends did not want cnn and me to know what articles they published they would have to go into the privacy policies and simply check that they don't want that to happen.

That main reason people think opt out is bad is simple, most people are too stupid to take care of that. And they are right, the vast majority of Facebook users will never take the time to update their privacy settings to make sure there data is not getting out. This also works the opposite way, if the policies are set to "opt in" these features would be completely useless because no one would bother to turn them on.

This is what all of these senators and sensational journalists are forgetting. No one on Facebook cares about their privacy. If you asked them they would say that they do but their actions don't reflect that at all. My first example is Facebook apps and games. Almost every 3rd party Facebook app demands full access to your profile to use it. When you sign up for farmville, Mafia Fight IV, or whatever Facebook asks you if you want to give this application full access to your data or not. If you "opt out" you can't play your game. Because of these types of apps most Facebook users have already given all of their data out to sketchy 3rd party app developers. Now I realize there may be a few people out their who haven't added any apps (though my news feed would argue.) But here is the thing that really cracks me up, everyone on your friends list (unless you specifically change your privacy policies) has full access to any information you have on your profile. Now right not I could log into my facebook and copy and paste all the information on any of my friends profiles, (name, address, current status, likes, dislikes, phone number, and anything else they choose to post) I could take that data and give it to anyone I feel like. So you say that's ok, I trust all my friends. Sadly that dosen't matter because chances are at least one of your facebook friends is stupid enough to fall for one of the thousand facebook profile phshing schemes, lose their account access and hence give all of your info to whoever pays for it.

My point is this, whatever you put up on facebook is NOT private information any more. It is not the government's job or even Mark Zukkerburg's to make sure the information that you so wantonly post to the internet. If you don't want something to be public, keep it off facebook. It's that simple. Facebook is not trying to take away your privacy, you are freely and willingly begging them to take it.

-Todd