Facebook Masks Worse Privacy With New Interface 446
An anonymous reader writes "Facebook launched new privacy settings this week. Cosmetically, this means that the settings are explained more clearly and are marginally easier to manage. Unfortunately, some of the most significant changes actually make preserving privacy harder for its users: profile elements that could previously be restricted to 'Only Friends' are now designated as irrevocably publicly available: 'Publicly available information includes your name, profile picture, gender, current city, networks, friend list, and Pages.' Where you could previously preserve the privacy of this information and remain publicly searchable only by name, Facebook now forces you to either give up this information (including your current city!) to anyone with a Facebook account, or to restrict your search visibility — which of course limits the usefulness of the site far beyond how not publicly sharing your profile picture would. That Facebook made this change while simultaneously rolling out major changes to the privacy settings interface seems disingenuous."
Give false info (Score:5, Informative)
Likewise, when sites ask for security questions such as pet's name, there's no obligation to give a truthful answer: just one that you will consistently give to that site when asked that question. It's the internet - you're not even a number here.
Re:Also makes social engineering harder (Score:4, Informative)
Re:DON'T LIKE iT? DOn'T USE IT !! (Score:5, Informative)
You say that as though cancelling your account might somehow lead to your personal information being purged from Facebook's database and your photos removed from their web servers. Where did you get that idea from?
Indeed.
Friends List (Score:4, Informative)
Your friends list can be hidden from strangers, it's just not in the privacy settings.
You have to go to your profile page, then click the pencil icon in the upper right corner of the friends box. Uncheck 'show my friends in my profile'.
It will still show your friends to your other friends, though.
Re:What's the complaint? (Score:3, Informative)
I was not worried about exposing some details to the world as I had posted very minimum to start with (effectively, only name and profile pic). But what pissed me off completely was that, during this change, they defaulted it to EVERYONE. If that's not a shitty way to apply 'more' privacy changes, I don't know what is.
Re:Also makes social engineering harder (Score:3, Informative)
Just checked this, there is no message which goes along with a friend request.
Remember to block your information from Apps! (Score:5, Informative)
There is a stupid loophole that still exists where one of your friends can use an app which can access just about any kind of information about you and give it to a 3rd party without you knowing about it. Even if you make a customized setting where certain friends don't get to know certain kinds of information about you, a Facebook app could bypass your own setting and get that information ignoring your "friends" privacy settings.
So remember to go to your privacy settings, then "Applications and Websites", then "What your friends can share about you" and uncheck whatever you don't want strangers to know about you.
Re:DON'T LIKE iT? DOn'T USE IT !! (Score:5, Informative)
Not quite.
I cancelled my facebook account around 2 months ago, and there was a two week delay before they actually deleted my profile.
Google had some stuff cached for a few weeks more.
FB name changes (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Remember to block your information from Apps! (Score:3, Informative)
There is a stupid loophole that still exists where one of your friends can use an app which can access just about any kind of information about you [...] So remember to go to your privacy settings, then "Applications and Websites", then "What your friends can share about you" and uncheck whatever you don't want strangers to know about you.
There is still a stupid loophole that still exists where we live in the real world and once you let the data out of your control, the battle is already over. So remember to not put anything into Facebook that you don't want the world to see. There, fixed that for you. What part of if you don't control the server, you don't control the data was unclear to you? I have hosted web services, I don't even assume that the people at JustHost won't just go through my directories and look for anything interesting if they have some free time. I might believe that nobody is messing with a colocated server, because that's harder to hide. If I really care, I need to have physical control over the machine, so the only place I store any passwords on a network-connected machine is my non-multiboot Linux desktop, which I keep updated and don't install extremely wacky software on. But most importantly, it lives in my house behind a firewall or two where it's non-trivial to access...
Re:What's the complaint? (Score:1, Informative)
You can control application privacy settings. It's in another area. I have it locked down to just the minimum for all my apps.
Re:DON'T LIKE iT? DOn'T USE IT !! (Score:2, Informative)
Actually FB makes a clear distinction between disactivation of your account (they keep the data and just hide it from other users) and deletion (a feature they have been forced to introduce recently). You can always suspect they actually keep the data but no proof exists that they do so.
On the other hand, I guess a "quiet" account (someone who would not post a lot of info, and who would log every month only for example) must not be worth a lot for them. They live on the stats provided by the analysis of what you say and do.
Re:What's the complaint? (Score:4, Informative)
The walk-through tries to change all your settings to everyone (less private). If you just click "OK", that's what you get.
It's amazing Facebook tried to pawn this off as an improvement in privacy; it is the opposite.
Re:privacy (Score:1, Informative)
If you send a friend invite to someone it opens up your entire profile for browsing.
Re:What do they mean by "Friends of friends"? (Score:3, Informative)
Your assumption is correct. It only recurses to one degress of seperation
It's not friends of friends of friends ;)
Re:Friends List (Score:3, Informative)
They changed it already. That option now hides your friends list from everyone, even your friends.
Re:DON'T LIKE iT? DOn'T USE IT !! (Score:1, Informative)
They're not your photos anymore, actually! Unless otherwise marked, all of the photos of you and your friends are property of Facebook as soon as you post them.
Re:TheJynxed, I think you're wrong. (Score:2, Informative)
Until now that is, as you have to specifically opt-out of it now.
Or didn't you read exactly what they exposed?