How many of you are Facebook users? I bet most of you. That includes me too. There have been so much noise around recent facebook privacy changes. It seems now we must be more careful online before submitting any personal stuff. We will talk about some recent facebook privacy changes and its implications in this article.
Just few days ago, facebook implemented some privacy changes. Till here it looks everything fine but the shocking thing most of you will find out that, your privacy settings are changed without your consent. If you login to Facebook after those changes, you will be greeted with a message telling you about some changes.
If you clicked the “Skip for Now” button, then you are letting your facebook privacy settings as per new changes which by default changes your settings to make your Pics and personal info viewable to all or to friends of friends even though you may have limited that to just friends or no one.
And if you clicked on “Continue to next step” , you will see the privacy settings changes they have made on their own. There , old and new settings are shown letting you change them back.
Here, you will see, almost every setting has been changed to either “Friends of friends” or “Everyone”. Thats disgusting.The reason i say its disgusting is most of the users on facebook wont bother to click on that “proceed to next step” and they will click “skip for now” as they wont think that facebook can even change their settings without even asking them.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTpa3AS39uA
So what does this mean for you? whats the complications? If you forgot to change back these settings, your personal info and pictures will be available in public domain which means everyone will have access to it, search engines like google will index it in their database. This will result in things like anyone can know your sensitive information and can use it to harm you in one way or other.
Something like this happened few months back too when many people tried to delete their account including me, which later prompted Facebook to backtrack.But it seems, they want you to forget about your privacy so that they can earn more money.
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Well I was one of the people who clicked on the “proceed to next step” button. But yeah, I find it disgusting that they have to ask you yet AGAIN. I mean they should at least leave it as it was and ask you if you wanna change it but with keeping your old settings there.
Yes, that’s the whole point. Someday they will change so many stuff without asking and if you don’t login for long time, that means all ur privacy is gone. That’s bad.
I have to whole heartily disagree with the intentions of your article. My settings were left as my “old settings” by default, the exact opposite of what you state.
Uhhh no. My privacy settings are the same as they were before. They never changed. WTF you talking about?
Well, the screenshot i have showed you clearly shows old and new settings. The first section itself shows that things like about me, family relationship, education etc are set to “everyone” instead of what you or me set that up initially. Other settinngs too were changed if you had checked clearly.
If nothing has been changed, facebook wont even had shown the new and old settings.
Ohh and BTW, we were told about this in advance. So no, it isnt “without our consent”.
Telling in advances doesnt mean, they should change anything they like. They may have shown you a windows asking if you would like to change to new settings instead of asking u wana restore old settings.
Also there are people who don’t login to facebook daily or even months and the settings are changed for them till they login next time making many personal info public for them which they never wanted.
What I did before those new changes took place was made my profile only available to those I know. When that new privacy pop-up showed up as I soon as I signed on facebook the other day, I made sure to keep it at old settings, which showed me that my profile was still only viewed by friends only and not everyone. Hopefully that will help for those who had their profile private before the new changes took place, but it should be checked upon just in case.
When I went on to check my privacy settings after the new setting took effect, all my original privacy settings (set to ‘friends only’) were still in effect so don’t say facebooks disgusting when they haven’t actually done a great deal wrong. they’ve made the privacy settings more effective but if you don’t like the way they work then don’t use the service.
Such a small sample space. My sample space cancels out yours: my settings defaulted to ‘Old settings.’ I find the easier controls for photo albums, and the new one for status updates excellent.
yup, i did find the management better but i dont like the way the changes are made.
Dee and Rachel nailed it perfectly.
Check this article at PCworld.com.
http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/184090/facebook_privacy_changes_go_live_beware_of_everyone.html
thanks Jason! you’re right too
Hi. I’m having a bit of a problem with FB showing all the things that “I like” on everyone’s wall! I can’t figure out how to fix that because I don’t want my friends to get a notification every time “I like” something!! Please help if possible!!
@April M,
I tried searching the settings related to “I Like”, but i am unable to find it anywhere. May be this is one of the things moved out of new facebook settings. I am still not confirming it, but its likely to be the case here. May be someone else can confirm me.
If you dont want your friends to get notified everytime you like something either have them fix their notification settings, or quit worrying whats on your friends pages and pay attention to your own lol
Obviously, you cant control your friends notifications and many of you cant stop worrying about privacy? A tough road ahead guys :)
Why are you all agonising? Facebook does have a “delete my account” option, doesn’t it?
Every service has a “delete my account ” option but that does not mean that everyone is able to breach our privacy one way or the other.
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