Facebook and its privacy changes, how does this affect you?

Facebook is something that your average internet user is a part of and knows how to use the social networking tool. Facebook has more that 400 million active users, founded in February 2004 and is now on par with the likes of Google and Yahoo in terms of unique visitors.

With so many users,  Facebook privacy has been on the agenda, Mark Zuckerberg recently announced that changes to the Facebook privacy policy are being made. The Facebook “like” button is currently being added to thousands of sites which now creates automatic authorization for Facebook to publish this in yours and your friend’s feeds.  On the 50 000 sites that the “like” button was added it was clicked on more than ONE BILLION TIMES in 24 hours. This is huge for marketing and research analytics into the behaviour of individuals.

Facebook privacy settings are not as private as one would think. Your default privacy settings allow people to access your information. So your data is floating out there if you are not making sure that your privacy settings are under your control.

Facebook have not explained its new privacy policy as well as they could have but keeping it vague is probably in their best interest. Facebook is worth what it is worth because of the information it has about its users.

Make sure you are reading the fine print on privacy and that your information is not being shared with people you do not want bugging you!

Lianne du Toit