Facebook privacy issues

Facebook is now the number one social networking site in the world. Many think that Facebook is a benevolent force that wants to help people keep in touch with friends and loved ones. In the past year alone, Facebook more than doubled its U.S. audience from 54.5 million visitors in December 2008 to 111.9 million visitors in December 2009. It now accounts for 7% of all time spent online in the U.S. Lately Facebook has been facing a lot of criticism over privacy issues. News emerged that a Facebook loophole had allowed advertisers to see personal user information. As a result Facebook decided to ramp up safety. I use facebook, because it is a great way to keep in touch with friends from all over the world. I personally keep my information to a minimum. I am amazed by how some people put their biographies, addresses and other personal information on Facebook. If you use Facebook be smart and protect yourself.

I stumbled across this interesting site that scans your Facebook for privacy holes. Check out http://www.reclaimprivacy.org/. When you hit the reclaimprivacy.org site, read the instructions carefully and run their tool against your Facebook privacy settings. The service will offer up recommendations to tighten up your Facebook security and fix them for you. Give it a try to see if you have any privacy holes that need filling. I was amazed at how "unprotected" my information was.

Here is my take on the privacy issues facing Facebook. I think that CEO Mark Zuckerberg's head became inflated after learning Facebook became the #1 social network site, surpassing MySpace and others that he really did not care about heeding any concerns of anyone that had been trying to warn him of the privacy issues. Now that Facebook has been in the media negatively he decides that it's time to wake up and realize the dream might be over if he fails to deal with the problems facing Facebook. For the changes that Facebook made as a result of the fierce criticism you can read Tom Spring's article "Facebook beefs up privacy with three big changes" in PC World.  http://www.macworld.com/article/151570/2010/05/facebook.html#commentsjump

How safe do you really think you are? Corporations and commercial websites have a habit of finding and exploiting information for their own agendas. Look at all the people who've been arrested or lost their jobs. It's a new world folks, think before you leap!