Shortly after Facebook rolled out its new privacy settings last December, I wrote a post explaining the new controls and what I liked and didn't like about them. At the same time, I was reading other people's commentaries that were much more harsh than mine and I was kind of confused, because my settings basically had stayed the same as what I already had unless I deliberately changed them during the changeover.

Well, the New York Times published an eye-opening article last week that clued me in to what I had been missing:

The 3 Facebook Settings Every User Should Know

It turns out that the reason I wasn't really affected was because I had previously customized my privacy settings so most of them were already restricted to just my friends or, occasionally, friends of friends. So it kept those changes. However, if you had never made any changes to Facebook's defaults—which I'm sure is true for a large percentage of users—Facebook changed that default to Everyone for several of the settings. (I don't remember what the old default was, but it definitely wasn't Everyone.)

I think this is an egregious abuse on Facebook's part. It's related to a point-of-view that Facebook's CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, made in an interview a couple of weeks ago that generated a lot of Internet buzz, including this rebuke from ReadWriteWeb:

Facebook's Zuckerberg Says the Age of Privacy Is Over

I totally agree with RWW's take on the topic. It's all very well and good if Zuckerberg wants to make all his personal information public (which, by the way, he doesn't). It's quite another to tell other people they should feel the same way.

When Mashable's Pete Cashmore wrote that he agreed with Zuckerberg, he got plenty of comments disagreeing with him (including one from me).

As I said there, different channels demand different privacy requirements. For some weird reason, people keep comparing Facebook with Twitter. I don't think they're comparable at all—especially when it comes to privacy matters. You know going into Twitter that you're broadcasting to the whole world—that's its entire raison d'etre. People join Facebook to interact with friends, family, colleagues... Some people expand that list quite broadly, which is fine, but there are still plenty of users who want to limit who sees what (with the caveat that nothing should ever be considered 100% private if it's on the Internet.)

So if you haven't done it recently, I strongly suggest you check all your Privacy Settings now to make sure they represent your wishes. (Roll over the Settings link at the top of the page.) And click on every single option, including the one to check your Photo settings. I was surprised yesterday to discover that my Wall Photos were set to Everyone—I could have sworn I had restricted them previously, but apparently not.

Two more things to consider:

• The option for Posts by Me includes anything you may have posted such as links to other sites, photos you upload, and simple status updates. And, if you have it set to Everyone, your status updates can then show up in search results, another "feature" that seemed to slip in under the radar (I'm not sure when).

  

  I'm sure no one here would ever think to post that their boss is an idiot on the Internet (!), but if you've ever posted anything you wouldn't want every single Facebook user to be able to see, you definitely want to check this setting.

• I used to have a lot of stuff set to Friends of Friends, thinking that if they're friends of MY friends, then they're "safe". But the NYT article makes a good point that people now are friending others for a variety of reasons, not necessarily only their good personal friends. So you should really give serious thought to what content you're willing to let anyone other than your own personal friends see.

What do you think? Do you agree that privacy is going the way of the horse and buggy? Or are you in the "I want to decide who sees what and how" camp? Please add your comments below!

Posted in Facebook, My Two Cents, Privacy/Security, Social Media