Search results for "facebook"

Internet Providers Lose Right to Sell Your Privacy (But Facebook & Google Still Can)

“There is a basic truth: It is the consumer’s information. It is not the information of the network the consumer hires to deliver that information.” 

These were the words of Tom Wheeler, the chairman of the F.C.C., when it was announced that Federal regulators have approved new broadband privacy rules that require internet service providers like Comcast and Verizon to ask for customers’ permission before using or sharing much of their data. He went on to say that the information used “should be the consumers’ choice, not the choice of some corporate algorithm.”

Privacy groups were, of course, thrilled with the new rules, which move the United States closer to the stricter policies in European nations.  The industries that depend on online user data were not quite as happy, with the Association of National Advertisers labeling the regulations “unprecedented, misguided, counterproductive, and potentially extremely harmful.”

What does all of this really mean for consumers?

Posted in Online Privacy, Uncategorized by Identity Theft Speaker .
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5th Day: Don’t Tell Facebook You Won’t Be Home for the Holidays

Holiday Security Tips: On the fifth day of Christmas, the experts gave to me, 5 Facebook fixes

In general, we share too much information on social media sites. During the holidays, we are positively intoxicated with the giving spirit! Without thinking, we share our holiday travel plans, click on seemingly charitable links or post pictures of a fun night out. And when you share with friends on Facebook, you are sharing with their friends and ultimately, most of the literate world. The problem is, some of those people aren’t really friends and only want to separate you from your holiday dollars.

Solution:  Apply these five fixes to ALL of your social sharing (not just Facebook)

  1. Customize your privacy settings. Sixty percent of social network users are unaware that their default privacy settings let others into most of their personal information. Facebook does a decent job of explaining how to lock your privacy down(https://www.facebook.com/help/privacy) but you must spend at least 90 minutes going over the settings to properly protect yourself.

Posted in Identity Theft Prevention by Identity Theft Speaker .
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Facebook Using Your Likes, Browsing History & Mood Manipulation

facebook adsWhen you read the recent blog post from Facebook about how they’re going to “Make Ads Better” and “Give People More Control”, you really want to believe them.  You want to believe that they’re really just trying to make your life easier by providing ads relevant to your “likes” and apps you choose to install.  Sure, if I have the MLB app, why wouldn’t I want to know about a sale on caps for my favorite ball team?  Or if I’m an exercise nut, getting the latest gear for my next triathlon might be really important to me and save me the time of searching for it.

But the bottom line is this: Facebook is going back on something they promised years ago.  Not only are they using our likes and apps to market to us, they’re also using our browsing history to target ads.  They can “only” use information from sites that have Facebook buttons (to like, recommend or share) or that you can login to with your Facebook account, but these days, that’s practically any site!

Posted in Online Privacy by Identity Theft Speaker .
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Facebook Privacy Settings Get Needed Update

Facebook Privacy Settings Update

Facebook Privacy Settings… Some may say it’s too little, too late. I’m relieved that Facebook is finally responding to concerns about their confusing and weak privacy settings.  The social media giant (who has been losing customers of late) has recently made several changes to their settings.

Facebook Privacy Settings Update

  1. Additional photo settings.  Your current profile photo and cover photos have traditionally been public by default. Soon, Facebook will let you change the privacy setting of your old cover photos.
  1. More visible mobile sharing settings.  When you use your mobile phone to post, it is somewhat difficult to find who your audience is because the audience selector has been hidden behind an icon and this could lead to unintended sharing.  In this Facebook privacy settings update, they will move the audience selector to the top of the update status box in a new “To:” field similar to what you see when you compose an email so you’ll be able to see more easily with whom you are sharing.

Posted in Online Privacy, Social Media Privacy by Identity Theft Speaker .
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Facebook knows what you said, EVEN IF YOU DELETE B4 POSTING!

delete keySelf-censorship on Facebook

Do you ever delete the words you type on Facebook before you hit post?

Have you ever started to type a status update that you thought was hilarious…until you realized your boss might not appreciate your 8th-grade humor? So what’d you do? You quickly hit the delete key and watched your comment disappear forever, right? Not exactly.

What if you are ready to make a snarky comment to Greg, the upperclass jerk who stole your high school girlfriend (and is about to get a divorce, ha ha), but decide to take the high road just before hitting the “post” button and instead, wish him well on his pending journey of love (despite the fact that it’s bound to fail)?

No harm done, right?  You never hit the post button, so no one ever saw it! Well, it turns out that’s not quite how it works in Facebook Land.

Posted in Online Privacy by Identity Theft Speaker .
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Facebook Privacy and Security Info Graphic

Thanks to Naomi Paton from BestComputerScienceSchools.net for sharing this Facebook Privacy Infographic!

Facebook_Privacy

 

Share this infographic on your site!
According to an early 2013 report from ComScore.com, Facebook still maintains the lead for American user engagement for a single web site — averaging a minute short of 6.75 hours per user in the month of Mar 2013. While this number is a decline from the same period in 2012 (with an average of nearly 7.25 hours per user), it’s obvious that American Facebook users spend a considerable amount of time on the site — more than any other social media site — revealing facts both mundane and interesting about their lives — facts that might be of interest to other people and companies, including those with ill intent.

Posted in Online Privacy by Identity Theft Speaker .
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How Do I Delete My Facebook Account? [Burning Questions Ep. 1]

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cB7_JLdayv4&rel=0]

I was asked recently by someone, “How do I delete my Facebook account?”  Why would anyone want to do that?  Perhaps because Facebook has announced that they are making more changes to their data use policy.  This time, they are trying a trick that they have tried before and simply by using their software, you are agreeing to it.

Here’s what it is.  They can take any of your photos- say a profile photo or pictures of your kids, and when you “like” a product, they can advertise your photo next to that product.  In essence, this means you are endorsing those things you have liked in an advertisement.

So imagine your teenage daughter has a giggly sleepover with friends.  They’re on Facebook and they see a Bacardi ad and to be cool your daughter “likes” it and then she likes the movie Magic Mike (even though she hasn’t even seen it), but now her name and her photos are associated with those two likes and is shared across her entire network.

So, why do people want to delete their Facebook accounts?  Maybe because they’re tired of giving their privacy away, they’re tired of the arrogance of Facebook obviously making these changes for commercial profit purposes and they try to sell it to us as if it’s for the greater good of the user.

There is so much of our information out there that is not under our control.  But social networks such as Facebook are under our control, so people want to take back control of the little privacy they have.

Now, I don’t want you to go out and take an emotional response and just cancel your Facebook account. As you will see in this episode, there is a right way to delete your account, and a wrong way. Choose wisely.  I want you to think about it and take four steps:

  1. Backup your data.
  2. Deactivate your account for a week or two first to see if you really want to live without it.
  3. Alert your friends if you do decide to permanently delete your account.  The intention is to protect your privacy, not anger your friends!
  4. Delete your account.

(Watch the video to see exactly how to do all of these steps.)

Posted in Burning Questions (Video), Online Privacy, Social Media Privacy by Identity Theft Speaker .
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Facebook Privacy: New Data Use Policy Banks on User Laziness

facebook privacy 2Is there such a thing as Facebook privacy? You’ve might have heard that Facebook is proposing a new Data Use Policy and Statement of Rights and Responsibilities (formerly known as a privacy policy). No one refers to it as a Privacy Policy anymore, because there is absolutely no sign of privacy left. And if you read the email from Facebook alerting you to the changes, or even the summary of changes that they provide, you are left with no clear idea of the magnitude of those alterations (you’d have to read the actual suggested changes).

Facebook is masking privacy erosion with a deceptive executive summary. The latest changes make me very uncomfortable in three ways:

  1. It appears that Facebook has left open the option to collect and utilize your mobile phone number when you access Facebook from your mobile device. That is valuable information to advertisers who want to text, call or serve up ads to you directly.

Posted in Online Privacy, Social Media Privacy by Identity Theft Speaker .
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How To Turn Off Facebook Graph Search

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0j-mIhbbHQ?rel=0]

Do you want to know how to turn off Facebook Graph Search?

If you walk onto a used-car lot and brag to the salesman that you’re rich, who’s to blame: the salesman for exploiting that information to sell you a car for more than it’s worth, or you for naively sharing in the first place? Both! The same is true in the hacking of the Facebook Graph Search data; Facebook AND poorly informed users SHARE the responsibility for this latest breach.

In case you haven’t heard the latest, Brandon Copley, a mobile developer in Dallas, Texas, was able to exploit Facebook’s Graph Search to collect 2.5 million phone numbers of Facebook users.  Copley is not a malicious hacker; he was simply trying to show how vulnerable the information is that people leave “public” on Facebook.

Posted in Online Privacy, Social Media Privacy by Identity Theft Speaker .
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