Facebook Privacy Change Encouraging Users to Give out Personal Data
Facebook, the online networking community site, recently announced plans to unveil a new trend in its privacy settings last month. Now the site has brought out these settings, but critics and users do not seem to be very happy with the results of what Facebook terms as user-friendly settings.
The criticism for the privacy settings change is that in asking users to update or review their settings, Facebook has also reset all earlier privacy settings to match default modes. This means that carefully selected settings created by users for their profiles when they set up their accounts are no longer applicable on their content. Considering that most users have highly personal and sensitive content on their Facebook accounts, this data will now be revealed unless the user changes his/her privacy settings again.
Critics have accused the social networking website of pushing users to reveal more information in a round about way by setting more exposure as the default. Although the user will see a popup asking him to update privacy settings when he logs in and although changing the settings is a fairly simple task, critics are against Facebook forcing the issue on users.
Critics feel that Facebook had no business changing existing settings to their own default and thereby exposing private data to millions of web users both through Facebook and through other channels.
Reacting to the protests, Facebook spokespersons have clarified that the idea behind the change is for users to manage their privacy of their content in a more effective manner, and that there is no intention to cause greater exposure of users’ information.
With the ever-growing popularity of social networking sites, internet safety might be an issue for you if you are thinking of getting broadband for your home computer. If you choose to search for broadband providers through Broadband Genie, you will be given all the information you need about the suppliers on their easy to use comparison table to help you choose the best broadband for you and your family.