The Money Man Behind Rick Santorum: Who Is Foster S. Friess?
Savings Experiment: Snow Removal
Social networking giant Facebook, the largest such site in the U.S., recently has been urging users to update their privacy settings in connection with ongoing changes to the service. The changes coincide with the recent deal between Facebook and Internet search giant Google Inc. (GOOG) to bring data from the social network into the search engine as real-time data.
Many Facebook users are finding that parts of their profiles are now public, whether or not they want them to be. Facebook may share public information with software developers who build services for Facebook users. Concerns over privacy have prompted 10 privacy organizations, lead by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), to file a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).
The complaint asks the FTC to investigate Facebook's practices and to require it to restore previous privacy settings that allowed people to choose which personal information to disclose. Facebook says it discussed this program with the FTC and other regulators before making changes.
Information considered public by Facebook includes a user's name, profile photo, and work and school networks, as well as pages the user is a fan of. The user's sex, location, and list of friends are also public, but can be hidden or left blank. Users can also change their setting to disallow the availability of information to search engines such as Google. Users should be aware that the use of third-party applications can allow access to some profile information. Recent updates do allow Facebook users to divide friends into lists, as well as to specify who sees status updates.
Ultimately, it's generally best to assume that nothing is ever completely private online.
Goldman Earnings Sink After Buffett Dividend
Johnson & Johnson's Income Falls 23%
Burberry Shares Leap on Sales Update
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
12-18-2009 @ 6:11PM
al coholic said...
How the hell is this any invasion of privacy. Unless I'm mistaken people openly post their profiles so everyone can access them. I mean, can't anyone just sign up for a facebook account and see the same thing google is showing?
This reminds me of the paranoid e-mails I received not too long ago where people were worried to death that people could get their phone numbers and addresses off the net. Have we all gone nuts? That information has been in phone books for years.