I’ve always been a defender of Facebook to the many haters and non-believers as I do think Facebook fills a great gap - non-geeks are into it, so I can interact with my non webby friends on a regular basis.
But they’ve just made a totally misguided change to the privacy settings that is making me realise I’m deleting my acccount.
Previously you could control what showed up if someone searched for you - I had mine set that they could see my name, but not my picture or friends list, or any other information about me. I liked it this way as I could control what information was publicly available.
But as of today, Facebook has made the ridiculous decision to make all that data public.
What is considered publicly available information?
Publicly available information includes your name, profile picture, gender, current city, networks, friend list, and Pages. This information makes it easier for friends, family, and other people you know to connect with you.
Why is my profile picture, friend list and pages considered public information? Why is Facebook taking control of that data and not giving us a choice of showing it or not?
We should have control of our own privacy and data settings. A private Twitter account doesn’t show friends, so why has Facebook decided that it’s going to open it’s users’ data to the world?
A really crap decision. It’s a shame as I do really love Facebook but I’m going to delete my account as I can’t control privacy settings anymore.
Update: the very clever @disassociated has discovered that if you go to profile, click the pencil icon by friend’s list, then untick “show my friends” your friends won’t appear in the search results. I’m wondering if he had a PHD to figure that out? I’m still trying to switch off my profile picture and Pages. If anyone figures it out, let me know.
This post is tagged under: customer experience, social networking, transparency
Thanks for the post, that’s an utterly ridiculous decision and I don’t now how it’s ok for them to change terms and conditions to that extent.
I’m deleting too.
Be aware of the difference between deactivating and deleting. I had my account deleted (fully) nearly two years ago and have not rejoined since - as I think Facebook repeatedly make absolutely outrageous privacy decisions (this is one of them).
Deactivation doesn’t delete any of your data it only hides it from the site until you login in again.
The real thing is deletion. Learn more here:
http://www.facebook.com/help/search.php?hq=delete+account
How about these settings here then?
https://register.facebook.com/privacy/?view=search
Or getting there:
Settings > Privacy (manage) > Search > Search Results checkboxes
Or am I missing something?
I think they might not have rolled out the new privacy settings to everyone yet - that’s definitely how I got there before the update, but now those options don’t exist.
All I get is this:
Screenshot
This information makes it easier for friends, family, and stalkers to steal your identity.
the “click the pencil icon” trick IS NOT ENOUGH. i’m too deactivating my account, I’m up to here with facebook pissing on me.
you can hide the list from your profile, BUT IT IS STILL PUBLIC INFO to facebully! that means that they will share your list with anything they want, including all facebook apps.
they apparently decided that in order to execute their very scary, I assume, business plans, they need to be able to freely distribute one of the most sensitive pieces of private info you have.
no opt-out this time. if you were to opt-out, you wouldn’t serve them any useful purpose. so they chose to remove the option, they chose to force you to abide or leave facebook.
oh yeah, I’m leaving, and so should you.
I really don’t know why this is such a shock to people? For ages facebook have had a policy stating that they can pretty much do whatever they want with your data (regardless of how “private” you want it to be).
The best policy would be to only share what you want to make public on facebook, myspace or other social media. Anything else, consider a more secure form of communication, e.g. email, telephone, or face-to-face.
Dropping your account from facebook sounds like a bit of a knee-jerk reaction. Perhaps rolling back the amount of information you provide to these guys would be a better decision.
What scares me is that more people are treating (and trusting) facebook as a replacement for normal means of communication.
Remember never to put your birth year or address details on facebook or any other social media - for the exact reason that you never know what information about you might become public (or worse, be leaked without your knowledge).