Controversy Brewing Over Facebook’s New Privacy Settings

By now, all the loyal Facebook fanatics out there (myself included) have been made aware of the site’s new privacy settings. With a prompt that pops up when you login to your account, the changes are hard to miss! So what’s the story with these changes, and are they too much? Some very vocal groups are saying yes.

These new settings have created a lot of buzz across the internet landscape, with some claiming the Facebook is pushing users to share way too much information. Privacy groups have argued that if people make the wrong privacy selections, they’ll soon find their entire Facebook profiles are visible across the net – not just to their Facebook friends. And, it’s true – if you set your privacy settings to show for “everyone”, your profile info will be available to anyone on the internet, including to search engines for indexing.

However, when prompting users about the changes, Facebook does allow the option to choose “Old Settings,” so you can opt to leave all your settings as they were. So, if your profile was private to everyone but your friends, you can keep it that way. However, with all these major changes in place, I would advise that everyone comb through their privacy settings, and make sure they’ve made their preferred choices. I know I did! Don’t choose “everyone” unless you’re really ok with EVERYONE seeing your profile . . .

But, for some, the issue isn’t that simple.

According to a report by Online Media Daily, “Consumer advocates have asked the Federal Trade Commission to order Facebook to bring back its former privacy settings. In a complaint filed Thursday, the Electronic Privacy Information Center and nine other groups allege that Facebook’s controversial new privacy settings ‘violate user expectations, diminish user privacy, and contradict Facebook’s own representations.’”

As the article goes on to say, “Another area of contention involves the default settings. When Facebook rolled out its revised privacy controls, it asked members to review their settings, but also changed most defaults to share-with-everyone. The upshot was that some members who previously restricted access to their pictures, status updates and other information are now giving all Web users access to it.”

Facebook, however, says they met with the FTC and other outside parties for feedback before making the changes.

So what are your two cents on these new settings? Has Facebook gone too far, or is this a good option for users?

On the upside, you can now choose who sees your individual posts, links and other content, by choosing from a dropdown. So, if you want one status update or photo to be visible to all your Facebook friends, excluding only your grandmother or second grade teacher – done. Could definitely come in handy!

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