Facebook acts against privacy fears

 

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Posted on 10 Dec 2009 at 11:04

Facebook has started introducing new security settings designed to help users protect their privacy online.

The most interesting new feature allows users to choose an audience for their content, which in practice could mean users allowing their closest, most trusted friends to see compromising photos, while restricting family and work colleagues to more appropriate content. Facebook has long provided a way to categorise contacts into groups, which makes it very easy to share certain content with different lists of people.

The new measures also include the ability to hide your Friends list from search results, as well as from your profile, which means that people logged into Facebook will be unable to see who you know. Weirdly, the list will remain visible to those who are not logged in. Facebook notes that there are other measures you can take to prevent people finding your details through search engines or Facebook's own search feature.

The company now recommends that users "make available to everyone a limited set of information that helps people find and connect with you," which means being careful with personal details such as work places and schools. Restrictive settings can be applied to very sensitive content including photos and video files.

If the sound of new privacy features makes your heart sink (Facebook's previous settings were abundant and quite intimidating to look at) be assured that the site plans to simplify the process of securing accounts. The new Privacy Settings page uses consistent settings for different parts of an account, including profile and contact information; applications; and websites. It is possible to allow access to these areas to one of three categories of person: Friends, Friends of Friends and Everyone. A Friends of Network option is also available to users who sign up to groups.

The new privacy settings will become available to users in a phased rollout, which involves the use of the Facebook transition tool that appears on the homepage. The default settings are the "Old Settings", with the exception being phone numbers and addresses, which are automatically restricted to Friends. Whether or not you want to share this information with Facebook Friends depends on your policy of whether they are real and trusted friends, of course. Any subsequent changes to privacy settings requires entry of the account password.

Previous reports on Facebook's move, including a critical article from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, claim that Facebook's default settings are to make information publically available. In its article published yesterday, the EFF said, "The privacy 'transition tool' that guides users through the configuration will 'recommend' - preselect by default - the setting to share the content they post to Facebook, such as status messages and wall posts, with everyone on the Internet." However, when we explored the new settings we found the exact opposite to be true. Could Facebook have changed its policy overnight? Please let us know your experiences.

Author: Simon Edwards