facebook privacy expert Archives - John Sileo, Cyber Security Training

Facebook Privacy and Security Info Graphic

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

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.

Facebook Privacy: New Data Use Policy Banks on User Laziness

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.

Facebook Privacy Policy: Zuckerberg Interview

Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, was interviewed just last week by Mike Arrington, co-founder of TechCrunch. They discussed privacy and how Facebook is looking to move forward in the future. Zuckerberg made some really interesting comments on Facebook, but I think the most prevalent to Identity Theft would be what he said on the progression of information sharing.

“People have really gotten comfortable, not only sharing more information and different kinds, but more openly and with more people.”

Zuckerberg also said that when Facebook began most people thought: why would I put any information on the internet at all? Now most users don’t think twice about privacy before making posts. Due to the Privacy changes Facebook made in December, your name, profile picture, gender, current city, networks, Friends List, and all the pages you subscribe to are now publicly available information on Facebook. Many people feel that this is a contradiction to what Zuckerberg had said before — that Facebook privacy controls are “the vector around which Facebook operates.” With more than 350 million users on Facebook, privacy is more important than ever.