Beware of Facebook's privacy policy

Just got an email from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) expressing concerns about Facebook's decision to make all online activity on Facebook "social by default." What that means is, "All of your personal information, and all of your online activity, automatically shared by Facebook with anyone, anytime it wants to, without your permission."

EFF has published analyses of how the various Facebook changes affected your private information, including a video teaching you how to make your data private again, a translation of Facebook's jargon, and a guide to Facebook "Connections." The following four articles are recommended if you have any concerns or questions about Facebook's most recent changes: 

Facebook's Eroding Privacy Policy: A Timeline: How Facebook's privacy polices have changed from 2005 to April 2010.  

How to Opt Out of Facebook’s Instant Personalization: Step-by-step directions (and new video) on how to navigate Facebook's more complicated privacy settings to protect yourself from all the various "Instant Personalizations."

A Handy Facebook-to-English Translator: In a world where "the default is social," plain English terms like "public information," "visibility," or "connections" do not always mean the same thing this week that they meant two weeks ago. Do you really want your "Likes" and so much of your other personal information on Facebook to be public?

Six Things You Need to Know About Facebook Connections: "Connections" is such an innocent-sounding word. The blog post explains how connections allows your personal information to be shared with far more people than ever before, including people you don't know, regardless of whether you want them to.

Leave it to free enterprise. I'm not sure the FBI, CIA or NSA could have build a better system for sharing your newly "public information." I dropped out of Facebook months ago and while I deleted my Facebook account, nothing on Facebook really disappears.  I've had two well-meaning individuals want to share information from a YouTube account that I've never intentionally made public because it has NO video stored there. I haven't used it yet!. How did they find out I had a YouTube account? They're both on Facebook and apparently YouTube and Facebook now are "plugins" exchanging info with all the other corporate and government plugins. How many more reciprocal plugin accounts are being shared without my knowledge? How many of your other accounts are being shared? 

Anyway, that's why I've always paid my dues to EFF every year. To find out more about the Electronic Frontier Foundation and all the things they do, visit: http://www.eff.org/

Update: As I was writing this post, I discovered that Today@PCWorld has added a post, "New Facebook Social Features Secretly Add Apps to Your Profile," which reports that Facebook is now adding Facebook apps to user profiles without the user's knowledge or permission. 

If you visit certain sites while logged in to Facebook, an app for those sites will be quietly added to your Facebook profile. You don't have to  have a Facebook window open, you don't need to signed in to these sites for the apps to appear, and there doesn't appear to be an option to opt-out anywhere in Facebook's byzantine privacy settings.

Software added to our computers without our permission used to be called spyware or malware. Facebook now says that secretly adding the stealth apps is a bug, and apps are no longer being added, "however any unwanted applications that were previously added will still need to be removed manually."

Apparently EFF and 14 other consumer protection groups have launched a formal complaint against Facebook with the Federal Trade Commission. If Facebook's management cannot grow up and clean up their act, it may be time for the FTC or other adults to intervene. There's a reason that more corporate and government networks are already blocking Facebook and as a result of Facebook's lack of discipline, poor record on user privacy and now lack of rigorous software testing. It's about time!

It's everywhere! There is no escape!!

It looks like old dogs and young pups will both need to learn a few new tricks!

For those who thought they could avoid joining the more than 400 million residents of Planet Facebook, abandon all hope. Social media — complete with Facebook-like status updates, profile pages and networks of social connections — is coming to your office cubicle.

The SiliconValley.com "First Edition" had a short note and link to the original article: "Facebook-like status updates coming to the office" 

The article includes info on Lotus Connections, Sharepoint 2010 and Socialtext. Maybe the larger companies can work out a few kinks in the privacy and security issues with Facebook, Twitter and other less business oriented social software programs. While it is entirely optional, Ubuntu 10.04 LTS has social networking - broadcast and chat accounts - baked into the OS with access from the top level menus. The fact that social networking is included in all installations of this important long-term-support release speaks to how popular the Ubuntu developers think social networking has already become.
_ _ _

Updated - While business and other organizations move in the direction of social media, The New York Times has an article on the implications of social media on children:

The question on researchers’ minds is whether all that texting, instant messaging and online social networking allows children to become more connected and supportive of their friends — or whether the quality of their interactions is being diminished without the intimacy and emotional give and take of regular, extended face-to-face time.

What are the implications of more and more electronic communications between children? They obviously have some impact on relationships. Do social networks and texting potentially slow the development of social skills in children? Does this new means of communicating between friends help shy students come out of their shell? For the April 30th article with references to distinguished authors and books on the topic see: "Antisocial Networking?" by Hilary Stout.
_ _ _ 

In either case, I wasn't overwhelmed with Facebook when I tried it a while back. On the surface it allowed a friend's visit to China to be quickly and easily shared with friends from halfway around the world.  Technology always looks good until you can find and evaluate all the hidden costs. Actually I abandoned ship during the first round of Facebook privacy concerns, so I haven't rejoined the revolution... yet. But those of you who are (still) actively working with large organizations - corporations, non-profits, schools or voluntary associations - may find yourself needing to know more about this growing phenomenon from a business and a professional standpoint. I hope the articles will help and keep looking for those hidden costs.