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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
- 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.
- 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 John Sileo.
Tags: Facebook, Facebook Privacy Settings, John Sileo, Privacy, Sileo
I found these mobile device statistics on our children’s use of technology to be eye-opening. 38% of kids under 2 have used a mobile device – the digital babysitter, I suppose. Anyway, I think it’s important that we know what direction our kids are heading and what we, as parents, are doing to point them there. Part of security involves access: how much they have, how well they are monitored and what the consequences are for improper use.
John Sileo is an author and highly engaging speaker on internet privacy, identity theft and technology security. He is CEO of The Sileo Group, which helps organizations to protect the privacy that drives their profitability. His recent engagements include presentations at The Pentagon, Visa, Homeland Security and Northrop Grumman as well as media appearances on 60 Minutes, Anderson Cooper and Fox Business. Contact him directly on 800.258.8076.
Posted in Social Media Privacy by Identity Theft Speaker John Sileo.
Tags: children, Mobile Device Statistics, Mobile Security, Mobile Security Expert, Mobile Statistics, Sileo
[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:
- Backup your data.
- Deactivate your account for a week or two first to see if you really want to live without it.
- Alert your friends if you do decide to permanently delete your account. The intention is to protect your privacy, not anger your friends!
- 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 John Sileo.
Tags: "Deactivate Facebook", "Delete Facebook", "How do I delete my Facebook account", "Online Privacy Expert", Burning Questions, Burning Questions Live, How to delete Facebook, John Sileo, online privacy, Sileo
Social network monitoring becomes big business. Fresh off the heels of learning that the NSA has been gleaning data about us using information found on social networking sites comes the news that a school district in California is paying a monitoring service to watch and report on what students are posting on sites like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
Glendale Unified School District is paying $40,000 over the next year to a company called Geo Listening to monitor its students’ social media activity. This program was introduced after one of their students, 15-year-old Drew Ferraro, committed suicide by jumping from the roof of Crescenta Valley High School. It started as a pilot project in three schools last year and is now being rolled out to all middle and high schools across the district.
Posted in Social Media Privacy by Identity Theft Speaker John Sileo.
Tags: "schools monitoring", “social network monitoring”, Expert, Facebook Monitoring, identity theft expert, John Sileo, monitoring kids social media, monitoring our kids, monitoring students", school surveillance, Sileo, Social Media Privacy, Social Networking Privacy, Speaker, Twitter Monitoring
Is 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:
- 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 John Sileo.
Tags: Data Use Policy, Facebook, Facebook Announcement, facebook privacy expert, Facial Recognition Software, John Sileo, New Data Use Policy, Privacy, Privacy Expert, Privacy Policy
[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 John Sileo.
Tags: Facebook Graph Search, Privacy, Security, Turn of Graph Search, Turn off, Turn off Facebook Graph Search, What is Graph Search?
Before you read this article, stop and picture yourself as a 16 year old. Now that you’ve recovered from the trauma of that, think about this question: what thoughts consumed your time – your favorite band, your first car, your first love, your first job, your first password? Certainly not the latter, and you most likely weren’t thinking about online privacy issues.
It’s no surprise then that today’s teens don’t think about them much either, although they do more than most of us ever had to. The Pew Research Center recently conducted a survey entitled Teens, Social Media, and Privacy and found a variety of interesting statistics.
Teens share more about themselves on social media sites than they did according to the previous survey from 2006. A few of the more significant ones:
- 91% post a photo of themselves (up from 79%)
- 71% post their school name (up from 49%)
Posted in Online Privacy, Social Media Privacy by Identity Theft Speaker John Sileo.
Tags: John Sileo, online privacy, Online/Social Media Privacy, Privacy, Sileo, social networking, Teenagers, teens
School is out for the summer and the tasks that often fall upon the shoulders of your local schools are now sitting squarely on yours. In addition to making sure your kids practice their math facts, read regularly and get plenty of exercise, you’ll want to watch out for how they spend their free time when it comes to using Facebook, Tumblr, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube and other sites that can expose their social media privacy.
Social Media refers to web-based and mobile applications that allow individuals and organizations to create, engage, and share new user-generated or existing content in digital environments through multi-way communication. Okay, that’s too technical. Social media is the use of Internet tools to communicate with a broader group. Some of the most common examples are listed above. If you have elementary aged children, they may use more secure, school-controlled forms such as Schoology, Edmodo or Club Penguin, but if your kids are older, I can almost guarantee they’re into Social Media sites whether you know if or not.
Posted in Online Privacy, Social Media Privacy, Uncategorized by Identity Theft Speaker John Sileo.
Tags: "Online Privacy Expert", internet safety, John Sileo, online privacy, Social Media Privacy, social media safety, Social Networking Privacy
Do you know your social media privacy rights as they pertain to your workplace?
They will be different depending on where you live because the laws vary from state to state. Utah recently became the fifth state to put into effect such a law that governs the rights of both employees and employers. Legislation has also been introduced or is pending at the Federal level and in 35 states.
This has become a hot topic because more than 90 percent of employers use social media sites to help screen applicants. Since applicants have the ability to determine their online privacy settings to decide what is out there for public viewing, some employers have asked for access to their private social media content to get the real picture.
Posted in Social Media Privacy by Identity Theft Speaker John Sileo.
Tags: online privacy, Social Media Privacy
