Why Facebook Privacy Settings Don’t Matter

A new article in PC world discusses why the privacy settings on Facebook don’t matter – it instead blames the user for their own data breach. It recommends that those on Facebook should use their common sense and think in the long term. By controlling what you share and only sharing what is responsible Facebook is no longer in charge of your privacy.

Why Facebook Privacy Settings Don’t Matter

John C. Dvorak – I find it endlessly amusing how so many articles are written about Facebook and its cavalier lack of concern over privacy issues (case in point: Read Dan Costa’s column). A large community is up in arms over the fact that Facebook consistently changes the way it operates and constantly resets the privacy settings of the users to nil, as in NO PRIVACY.

This amuses me because it seems as if the majority of Facebook users don’t even know about or care about the privacy settings. Once in a while some old lady is flabbergasted by the fact that anyone can write on her wall, sure. And once in a blue moon some teenage girl says she “didn’t know” her teachers could see her comments. All the while the users of Facebook are increasing by the millions as the complaints are increasing by the thousands, thus amounting to nothing of consequence.

Now there is a movement to create an open-source version of the social network to address all these concerns, and it may or may not be successful, but it doesn’t matter since most users have so little regard for their own privacy. They’re too busy publishing humiliating pictures of themselves on Facebook, Flickr and elsewhere. It always seems to be a good idea at the time.

And why do Americans continue to do these dumb things? It’s a unique reflection of the short-term thinking that plagues the culture. We always hear about this phenomenon regarding the activities of American corporations, which always seem to be thinking short-term to appease the investors. They do things quarter by quarter instead of thinking toward the long future.

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John Sileo is the award-winning author of Stolen Lives, Privacy Means Profit and the Facebook Safety Survival Guide. His professional speaking clients include the Department of Defense, the FTC, FDIC, Pfizer, Prudential and hundreds of other organizations that care about their information privacy. Contact him directly on 800.258.8076.

Posted by Identity Theft Speaker John Sileo in Identity Theft Prevention, Online Privacy and tagged facbook, Facebook, facebook privacy, Facebook Safety, Identity Theft Speaker, John Sileo, Privacy Settings, Social Networking Expert.