Facebook Privacy Changes Leave Users Stumped
by Lesly Simmons
Yesterday Facebook began rolling out changes to its ever evolving privacy settings. While the interface, called the transition tool, hasn’t hit my personal page yet, I saw it earlier today on Facebook’s blog and checked out a new privacy video they created to explain how it all works. The new settings are touted as easier to use, but ultimately users still need to understand how to access Facebook’s granular settings to achieve a certain level of privacy.
If you’ve spent any time changing the default privacy settings then you know the three standard options for the visibility of your information are Friends, Friends of Friends, and Everyone, with a fourth for custom lists you’ve created (because you’re using lists, right?). From there all your information can be managed down to the individual, from who reads your posts to who can see photos that others tag you in.
An earlier video encouraged users to select “everyone” as their default to make sure they are easy to find, which obviously not every Facebook user wants (it was in this post but now seems to have been replaced by a blue box). I believe their privacy controls will become even more confusing for everyone but the most savvy users. According to the video below, Facebook’s goal is to ”simplify these settings, give you even more control, and make them even easier to use.” This is the case if user’s don’t mind everyone having access to their information, and with Google’s plan to start searching Facebook pages, everyone having access is not much of an exaggeration.
Not surprisingly, things at least feel less secure than ever, although in reality not much has changed. However, based on the hundreds of comments posted with the blog posts and video, most people never had a clear understanding of how to protect their information in the first place, and do not have a clue about what these changes really mean for them. The Facebook team has been leading up to this release for a while; Mark Zuckerberg posted about it on his blog last week, and more posts went up today explaining the privacy options in more detail. They are really doing all they can to get the word out, but its ultimately up to each end user to take some time and figure out how to set up the protections they really want.
Have you seen these changes yet? Are they prompting you to make any updates to your privacy settings at all?
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About control, facebook privacy settings, million users | Find me About says:
[...] Yesterday Facebook began rolling out changes to its ever evolving privacy settings. While the interface, called the transition tool, hasn’t hit my personal page yet, I saw it earlier today on Facebook’s blog and checked out a new …Read Original Story: Facebook Privacy Changes Leave Users Stumped – Black Web 2.0 [...]
Mikko Jarvenpaa says:
The settings box was extremely unhelpful, thanks to confusing terminology: for example, FB asks to set privacy for “About Me” (new default selected by FB was “Everyone”, not to my liking), but this isn't really reflected in the account. Does it mean only the Personal Info, or Info and Contact Details, or just the little box under the profile photo? When I navigated back to the profile page, I couldn't bring back the settings window, so I don't know if I agreed with the settings they had SELECTED FOR ME, or whether I skipped it and it will come back. If this isn't settled easily, I will keep things simple for me and leave FB, ending the guesswork.
About facebook’s privacy, facebook users, privacy controls, facebook settings | Find me About says:
[...] Yesterday Facebook began rolling out changes to its ever evolving privacy settings. While the interface, called the transition tool, hasn’t hit my personal page yet, I saw it earlier today on Facebook’s blog and checked out a new …Read Original Story: Facebook Privacy Changes Leave Users Stumped – Black Web 2.0 [...]
About facebook’s privacy, million users, privacy controls, facebook privacy, facebook settings | Find me About says:
[...] Yesterday Facebook began rolling out changes to its ever evolving privacy settings. While the interface, called the transition tool, hasn’t hit my personal page yet, I saw it earlier today on Facebook’s blog and checked out a new …Read Original Story: Facebook Privacy Changes Leave Users Stumped – Black Web 2.0 [...]
Mikko Jarvenpaa says:
The settings box was extremely unhelpful, thanks to confusing terminology: for example, FB asks to set privacy for “About Me” (new default selected by FB was “Everyone”, not to my liking), but this isn't really reflected in the account. Does it mean only the Personal Info, or Info and Contact Details, or just the little box under the profile photo? When I navigated back to the profile page, I couldn't bring back the settings window, so I don't know if I agreed with the settings they had SELECTED FOR ME, or whether I skipped it and it will come back. If this isn't settled easily, I will keep things simple for me and leave FB, ending the guesswork.
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