Facebook Crushes Privacy with Impunity

[MacUser]

The Facebook Privacy Settings You've Lost Forever
http://gawker.com/5428155/the-facebook- ... st-forever

All of a sudden my grandmother can see that I belong to the Queer Graduate Student Union and Open Relationships Networking Group. Please help. I can't bring myself to de-friend my grandmother!

AND...
Facebook Crushes Privacy with Impunity
http://gawker.com/5521194/facebook-crus ... h-impunity

After confusing and outraging users with a December privacy rollback, Facebook nevertheless saw its traffic reach new heights. So the social network's new campaign to reduce user privacy even further should come as no shock.

Earlier this month, in fact, Facebook took away the option to hide profile data like interests, "likes," work, education, current city and hometown. The Electronic Frontier Foundation raised a red flag about the change, writing, "The new connections features benefit Facebook and its business partners, with little benefit to you. But what are you going to do about it? "

Apparently not much: Despite widespread hue and cry in December, and even a rash of bloggers deleting and deactivating their accounts, Facebook's growth barely paused. In fact it resumed an upward trajectory this year and Facebook is now on track to hit 500 million monthly visitors.

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These links above offer ways to help restore SOME of your previous Facebook privacy until that change that also..

[MacUser]

Now the United States Senate is getting involved...
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0410/36406.html

Senators' letter to Facebook

April 27, 2010
Dear Mr. Zuckerberg,

We are writing to express our concern regarding recent changes to the Facebook privacy policy and the use of personal data on third party websites.....

Read more here:
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0410/36406.html

[MacUser]

Facebook to Share Your Info for Money

http://www.myfoxdc.com/dpp/money/facebo ... 2464814471

Facebook is automatically sharing that information, without your consent. If you don't want to share, you have to opt out.

University of Minnesota law professor and privacy expert Bill McGevern says it's an important line in the sand. And for Facebook, with 600 million users, the stakes are high.

“Facebook is trying over and over to get this shared so Facebook becomes the center of the web,” said McGevern.

Facebook want to make money by selling user information.

Among other things, Facebook is plugging into other websites so people can communicate their interests with friends, colleagues and acquaintances online. Facebook also changed its own website to create more pages where users' biographical information could be exposed to a wider audience.

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See more above on how to opt out "for now".

[MacUser]

Apparently.. Facebook is listening! Bravo. Why? Because people are deleting their accounts because of these serious privacy issues.

Facebook to simplify its controls
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d93102f4-5f81 ... ab49a.html

Facebook is to simplify its privacy controls after controversy over its handling of personal information.

The number of Facebook users considering deleting their accounts appeared to rise after censure from European data protection officials and critical press coverage prompted several prominent technology commentators to remove their data from the site.

According to figures from Google, the largest search engine, global queries for “delete Facebook account” have more than doubled in the past week, reaching a high.

Most of those searches came from the US, where the phrase was in Google’s top ten “hot trends” on Friday.

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