I’ve been asking my friends on Facebook about how they feel about the privacy issues Facebook is making us face, on a very frequent basis I might add. There seems to be two groups, those who don’t mind that Facebook shares info about them but that they as a user can say what other users can view or not. The other camp is more concerned with the behind the scenes stuff Facebook might be sharing. I fall in that latter camp. Anyway, great debate going on, less a debate and more “here is what you can do to tighten security”.
I think Facebook is ok, I am obviously not of a generation that feels they need to put every thought out on the web. I like that I can have friends and family see photos of my son or see an update of where I’m traveling. Other than that, it’s a pain in the arse.
As of late, Facebook has had some issues with security again, offering more “connection” information to Pandora radio as an example. It seems like an ok idea, what you say you like on Facebook, well that artist or song now shows up when you open Pandora. I like Pandora but I really like freedom and privacy more. To make me feel better about the whole Facebook privacy issue, one of my Facebook buddies sent me to instructions on how to opt-out of this latest round of privacy changes.
I gotta mention my Facebook buddy (Edward Laing the guy who started this awesome little gem) because I love his product, Pzizz: http://www.pzizz.com. I haven’t updated in a long time but I still use it, using NLP technology, it totally helped when I had huge insomnia problems. Now I have a nine month old, that’s all the help I need to crash. 
Oh and the tool he sent me to for opting out of the new round of privacy crap at Facebook: http://ustandout.com/facebook/opt-out-facebook-instant-personalization
Thank you Edward! And to everyone else, you need to think about where your valuable information is going when you are on the web. If you blog, you know what you pick to be there, if you search on a search engine you should know your search patterns are studied. That’s all find and dandy, but when you trust Facebook, you should be able to trust Facebook, or at least know what they are doing with your identity.
I might keep Facebook a while longer, but I’m watching you Facebook
I recently closed by Facebook account, mainly over the bleed to check your privacy settings on a more than regular basis. My main issue wasnthe ‘random’ changes that would occur to my privacy settings.
I too am from the early Internet generation, where we did not share everything online. I don’t out things out there thatni don’t want the entire world to see, so, when Facebook changes my privacy settings on me, I don’t have much that gets compromised.
In a day and age where you have a lot to do as it is to maintain your security on your identity, I just don’t want to add something else to that list of additional work.