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Just over two years ago, Sophos UK conducted a Facebook ID Probe to see how willingly social networkers give out their personal data. 43% of those in the probe accepted an invitation to be friends with Freddi Staur – allegedly a 20-something from London, but in reality a green plastic frog .
At Google's event today, the company announced not just a number of fantastic new features , including real-time search , but a new partnership as well: real-time search of public Facebook status updates.
We reported yesterday that Facebook is aiming to get people to be more public on the site and that anyone who hasn't changed their privacy settings will now see it "recommended" that their status updates, photos etc. be exposed to the whole web. I had a unique opportunity to speak to Barry Schnitt, Director of Corporate Communications and Public Policy at Facebook and quite a frank guy, at length this afternoon about Facebook's privacy policy changes.
Your name, profile picture, gender, current city, networks, Friends List, and all the pages you subscribe to are now publicly available information on Facebook. This means everyone on the web can see it; it is searchable. This represents just the latest instance of Facebook violating the contract it holds with its users.
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