The Internet & Facebook -- Define “Privacy”...

by M. A. Hamad

Screenshot of Facebook profile.

It used to be that people shouldn’t talk to strangers with dodgy nicknames in dodgy chat rooms – images of men with bulging bellies and receding hairlines saying they’re tall, built and chiseled to the bone come to mind – but nowadays even the most popular websites are places to be skeptical about. Like Facebook.

The social networking website, which has over 400 million active users, introduced a controversial set of privacy settings in December of last year that made people wonder – are they protecting us or tricking us into thinking they are?

The most troublesome of the settings was one that made people’s photos automatically accessible to the public, no matter what their settings used to be. Photo settings that used to be set to share with “friends of friends” or “friends only” instantly changed to “everyone” – because Facebook said so.

The fact that this ‘privacy setting’ overrode important choices that users made about their personal protection when setting up their profiles makes Facebook’s current privacy policy page slightly comical. The first bullet point of the policy reads, “Facebook is designed to make it easy for you to share your information with anyone you want,” but should perhaps end a little more accurately – anyone you want, and anyone we want.

 
Summary: Beware! Facebook privacy settings not designed to provide ultimate and trustworthy protection.