Facebook's new privacy settings backfire

by Natalie Fox

Facebook continues to be hit with privacy lawsuits and outrage civil liberties campaigners, a consequence of their changing them privacy settings late last year so that much more of users’ personal information could be available online.

Although changes were first announced in July of last year, the new privacy settings were implemented on December 9th, 2009 leading to waves of criticism of the “flawed” and “worrisome” developments.

The 350 million users of the largest social network could have their profile pages come up in search engines unless they change this option. The new settings are confusing, some users have complained, as they are spread out over multiple pages. Now a user’s profile picture, current location, friends list, gender, and fan pages are public information, available for anyone to see.

Jade George, senior editor of Time Out Beirut magazine, uses her Facebook page for work, mostly by joining groups and pages, and to email her friends occasionally. But she still keeps her account relatively private: “Everyone is on my limited profile and others are on my acquaintances list, which is even more private”, she says. “No one can see tagged pictures of me and you can only look me up on Facebook if you are friends of my friends.”

“I hate the fact that Facebook is trying to make as much of our information as possible open to others. It is sneaky,” she says. “For work, I find out events from groups mainly, and sometimes work acquaintances are easier to get a hold of and they feel closer to you when it’s on Facebook.”

Facebook said that the changes were implemented to give users more control over what information they share, therefore giving them more privacy. Users now have the option to limit each post, photo, video, etc. to whomever they choose. It seems that this has backfired, though, as not many people are aware of how the new settings work.

Facebook CEO and Chief Executive, Mark Zuckerberg was quoted as saying, “The best way for you to find the right settings is to read through all your options and customize them for yourself. I encourage you to do this and consider who you're sharing with online.”