EFF voices concerns about Facebook privacy changes. Facebook's revamped privacy settings will push more user data onto the Internet and, in some cases, make privacy protection harder for Facebook users, digital civil liberties experts said.
While acknowledging that many of the changes unveiled Wednesday will be good for privacy, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) Attorney Kevin Bankston said the social-networking giant is also removing some important privacy controls that it should have kept. [ Learn how to secure your systems with Roger Grimes' Security Adviser blog and Security Central newsletter, both from InfoWorld. ] "I think you're better off in some ways and worse off in some ways," he said. "It's really a mixed bag. " Ari Schwartz, chief operating officer of the Center for Democracy and Technology, offered a similarly mixed review. Bankston was more forthright in an EFF blog post. "Our conclusion? To date, between 15 and 20 percent of Facebook's 350 million users take the time to adjust their privacy settings.
Facebook privacy settings prove they don't have your interest at. Facebook changes have become increasingly controversial.
Usually I think that the problem came down to users being upset that someone rearranged their playground. Announced yesterday, the new “Privacy” settings were rolled out, and they point to Facebook’s continued Twitter envy. Sadly I think that it shows a company increasingly out of touch with its own product, and more dangerously, its users. The problem here is that Facebook wants all of us to join in their new deal with Google, where we share links and photos, and Google mines that content for better ad delivery. Likely if you’re a Facebook addict, you’ve already been shown the popup that prompts you whether you would like to share your, E-Mail, Phone #, Friends list, posts, photos, etc. with everyone on the web.
Wait. So I mark my profile as Friends only, and hide all of my information, but yet I still have to tell you not to put my post on the Internet? Facebook's New Privacy Changes: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. Five months after it first announced coming privacy changes this past summer, Facebook is finally rolling out a new set of revamped privacy settings for its 350 million users.
The social networking site has rightly been criticized for its confusing privacy settings, most notably in a must-read report by the Canadian Privacy Commissioner issued in July and most recently by a Norwegian consumer protection agency. We're glad to see Facebook is attempting to respond to those privacy criticisms with these changes, which are going live this evening. Unfortunately, several of the claimed privacy "improvements" have created new and serious privacy problems for users of the popular social network service. The new changes are intended to simplify Facebook's notoriously complex privacy settings and, in the words of today's privacy announcement to all Facebook users, "give you more control of your information.
" Our conclusion? Not to say that many of the changes aren't good for privacy. No longer.