Technology Tip: Facebook Privacy

Facebook is at it again. If you haven't revisited your privacy settings recently, now is the time to do so.

This week, Facebook announced its new data-sharing policies which make much of your profile information publicly available to 3rd-party websites unless you OPT OUT.

There are 2 major features that were introduced this week. Social Plugins add Facebook "Like" buttons to popular websites that allow you to easily post news or information you like to your Facebook profile. This one is not as much a problem, because you are actively choosing to "Like" something. The 2nd feature is called Instant Personalization. This feature will allow partner websites to use your public information to tailor your experience on their sites. Currently there are only 3 partners: Pandora, Yelp, and Microsoft Documents. This feature is the one you need to pay attention to. By default, a box is checked in your settings allowing Instant Personalization. If you do not want to share this information you need to actively go in and uncheck the box.

Now, the most important thing to know is that even if you uncheck the box, your friends can still share your information with these partner websites unless you block the application.

Here are very clear instructions from the EFF (Electronic Frontiers Foundation) on how to opt out of Facebook's Instant Personalization.

http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/04/how-opt-out-facebook-s-instant-personalization

Another change that Facebook has made concerns your profile information. Now when you go to your Profile (the first time after these changes were implemented), you will see a big box that asks you if you want to link to pages that match any interests you listed in your profile (for example, if you have listed on your page that you are a UNT alum, it will ask you if you want to link to the UNT Facebook page). You can choose to link to just one or two or to all of the suggested pages. However, what Facebook has not made clear is that if you choose not to link to the pages, the information you have previously entered in those sections will appear as empty in your profile. There's really nothing you can do about this other than decide which you would prefer (linking to public pages and sharing your interests with the world or showing no information at all), but it is worth mentioning here that you must make a choice.

~Somer