Will Facebook’s new privacy settings help the company regain your trust?
What do you think about Facebook’s new privacy controls? Do they restore your confidence and trust in the company?
Facebook has experienced a PR nightmare in recent weeks after a series of security and privacy breaches and botches caused various bodies – from privacy rights organizations to government agencies – to take aim at the company behind the world’s most popular social network. Concerned ex-users even launched a campaign urging others to delete their accounts and designated May 31st as Quit Facebook Day and CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s appearance at the Wall Street Journal’s All Things Digital conference led to him being compared to a sweating, squirming Richard Nixon.
Facebook has, however, recently rolled out a set of streamlined and consolidated privacy settings that are intended to make it easier for people to tell what information they are sharing and what information is being kept within their network. The new privacy controls are accessed via a single page that helps users see exactly what information may be shared and to either apply Facebook’s recommended settings or their own customized settings:
But some users may not find the settings to be quite as straightforward as they at first appear. Under Account>Privacy Settings, click Edit your settings (under Applications and websites) and you’ll see an additional set of options that control, for example, the information that can be accessed by the applications being used by your buddies. Never easy, is it?
I still hold the opinion that you should never put anything online that you wouldn’t want your enemy seeing. After all, Facebook is considered a social network - in other words, it’s not a private lounge where only you and your choice of friends are talking quietly amongst yourselves. What do you think about Facebook’s new privacy controls? Do they restore your confidence and trust in the company? Leave a comment and let us know what you think!
I find the new privacy settings much easier to understand and change. I still think FB should do a better job explaining how all of these settings affect your user experience and your privacy, but it’s definitelty a step in the right direction.
[...] New Facebook privacy settings: Will Facebook’s new privacy settings help the company regain yo… [...]
[...] of Facebook’s security and the information harvested by Bowes is information that people have chosen to make publicly available. What people should, however, learn from this incident is the importance of not over-sharing [...]