I’m pretty careful about what I put on the Internet, or at least I try to be. But sometimes the sites we’re relying on to keep our secrets change the rules without telling us.
I’ve had my Facebook profile set up in a way that only people I’ve friended can see my photos and profile information. I have the “photos of me tagged by others” setting set up so that only I see them. I also had my “Recent Activity” set up so that anything I did on Facebook – whether I “liked” someone’s status update, commented on a photo or a Wall, joined a group, or became a fan of something, it remained private and wasn’t broadcast to everyone. But today I discovered that Facebook removed the privacy setting that enabled users to prevent their “Recent Activity” from being exposed to the world. Apparently they did this months ago, and I only discovered it today. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg already discussed this and defended his decision to remove the privacy settings. I confess, I’m a bit behind in my tech blog reading. It’s been a busy couple of months.
Why is this a big deal? Let me walk you through it.
Let’s say you’re friends with Steven and Christine (fictional people) on Facebook, but they don’t know each other. If you comment on a photo that Christine posts, it shows up on Steven’s news feed. Steven can see Christine’s photo on his news feed, even though they aren’t friended. OK, let’s say Steven is a pedophile and you have absolutely no idea of this fact, and Christine posted a picture of their daughter. Through his Facebook news feed, Steven the pedophile becomes aware of this child, and clicks through the photos and Christine’s profile, discovers they live in the same town, discovers which park Christine takes her daughter to, and starts stalking them. Of course, this is a made-up scenario, but it could happen rather easily. If you’re posting pictures on Facebook, don’t you want the security of knowing that you can control who is seeing them?
Well, you can control this bit.
1. In the top right corner of your Facebook, click “Account”
2. Click “Privacy Settings”
3. Click “Profile Information”
4. Scroll down to “Photo Albums” and click “Edit Settings”
5. Set your profile pictures and your albums to whatever you want – mine are set to “Only Friends.” You can also create custom settings where you can exclude individuals or friends lists.
6. When you’re done click “Save Settings” at the bottom.
The catch with this is, everyone has to do this. If someone decides they don’t care who sees their photos and leaves them on the default public settings, then if you comment on their photos, their photo and your comment will show up in all of your friends’ News Feeds. So before you comment on that photo of you and Joe holding the gorilla-shaped bong with “Oh man, I can’t remember much of what happened last night, that was awesome” think about who you’ve friended on Facebook (Mom? Dad? Coworkers?) and whether you’d like that photo + the comment showing up on their news feed.
The next issue: anything you become a fan of will also show up on your Facebook friends’ news feed. Some seem innocuous enough, such as becoming a fan of Bacon, a fan of Mad Men, or a fan of the Atlanta Braves. But what about more personal items like becoming a fan of Rape Survivors, Adam & Eve Sex Toys, or Narcotics Anonymous? As far as I can tell, there isn’t a way to stop this from being broadcast to everyone anymore. Fail.
Also getting broadcast: your relationship status, when you post on someone’s wall, when you “like” something, who you add as a friend. You can no longer control this. I don’t know about you, but I prefer to keep my Facebook activity private.
I really don’t understand why Facebook took away this feature, but it was a major oversight on their part. Shame on you, Facebook.
Anyway, be careful out there, folks. This is clearly a big enough deal that people formed a group called “We petition to bring back ‘News Feed and Wall’ privacy settings!“
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