Facebook, in an effort to rule the Internet, once again does it at the expense of their users privacy. Not too long ago Facebook caused an uproar when they gave you the option to change their updated privacy settings. Unfortunately the default picks were set for public sharing of your information. So if you bypassed that screen, you were now exposed to many more people than you originally thought.
Google itself made a couple of guffaws with their privacy settings when they released Google Buzz, but have since fixed the issue. When you do a Google search, whether you're logged in or not, Google knows what IP address you're at and can refine the Search Results page based on what you've previously clicked. However, I think Facebook has hit a whole new level of privacy breach. One of the reasons I saw Facebook as becoming more popular than MySpace was because of its privacy settings. MySpace wanted people to search for more connections. You can search for specific genders, age an relationship status too. Facebook was private unless you decided to open your profile. even the amount of people you can open your Facebook profile to was limited to 5000 friends (unless you're a business)
Now Facebook is trading in their popular "Share" button seen at the bottom of Blogs and articles for the "Like" button. Once clicked it will automatically tell everyone following your profile that you like that article. You can also post a quick blurb about it. (Okay, so I caved in and put it on the bottom of this Blog). This is all what Facebook call the "Open Graph".
The other thing to notice is that if Facebook is incorporated on other websites, you'll be able to see what articles and pages your friends like. In some instances, their pictures will appear. In other instances the website you're on will tailor the articles or advertising based on how popular your friends like it.
Website owners for a while now have allowed you to login to their sites using your Facebook account. Now when you do that, you can be sharing everything you do on that website with all of your connections. For example if you login to Pandora with your Facebook account, every time you "Like" a song, you're broadcasting it to your Facebook friends. No "Share on Facebook", no "Tell your friends", it just automatically does it.
How to watch what you share:
- If you're logged into Facebook on your browser. Just logout and you shouldn't be sharing 3rd party websites info. That is unless...
- You use Facebook to login to 3rd party websites. If you do, just create a login on the site independent of your Facebook account.
- Check your Facebook application settings page to see if you're sharing too much info.
- You can deactivate your account which hides it until you decide to reactivate it.
- You can delete your account totally
What do you think of Facebook's new Open Graph?