Though some users have reacted harshly to Facebook's new privacy and security changes, Facebook says the changes will help keep users secure and make them more knowledgeable about how they share information.
Facebook is defending changes to its privacy and security
controls despite criticisms from some users.
On Dec. 9,
Facebook
announced it was implementing a number of privacy-related changes, including the
ability to control who sees what piece of content on a user's page, a
Transition Tool and simplified privacy settings. However, some users lambasted
the move for changing the default privacy settings so that users are
automatically sharing data at the most open level possible.
"Although sold as a 'privacy' revamp, Facebook's new
changes are obviously intended to get people to open up even more of their
Facebook data to the public," Kevin Bankston, senior staff attorney at the
Electronic Frontier Foundation, wrote in a
post
on the EFF Website. "The privacy 'transition tool' that guides users
through the configuration will 'recommend'-preselect by default-the setting to
share the content they post to Facebook, such as status messages and wall
posts, with everyone on the Internet, even though the default privacy level
that those users had accepted previously was limited to 'Your Networks and
Friends' on Facebook."
But Facebook says the site is only making recommendations
for privacy settings
based
on user behavior, and the settings can be changed with a simple click of
the mouse.
"The mass of our users had never done anything at all,"
said Tim Sparapani, director of public policy at Facebook. "Hundreds of
millions of people had never stopped and thought about the
consequences
of sharing information. So we thought that it was important enough, as
people who care about user privacy, to walk them through that process."
As part of its privacy strategy, the social networking site
added more granular controls on content to allow users to select a privacy
setting for every post they make at the time they create it. The company also
eliminated regional networks and created a Transition Tool with which users can
review their privacy settings.
But some users are still concerned that Facebook has made missteps.
Among them is allowing the
Facebook
applications of "friends" to have access to publicly available
personal data.
"Facebook previously offered a solution to users who
didn't want their info being shared with app developers over the Facebook
Platform every time one of their friends added an app: Users could select a
privacy option telling Facebook to 'not share any information about me through
the Facebook API,'" Bankston wrote. "That
option has disappeared, and now apps can get all of your 'publicly available
information' whenever a friend of yours adds an app."
According to Sparapani, while this is true, "over 95
percent" of users had never hidden the publicly available information
field anyway, "so that those fields were out there all the time, and it's
really basic information-it's your name, your profile photo if you put one up
there, the city that you reside in if you put that in your profile ... so it's
really like essentially only demographic information that the application would
get," he told eWEEK.
Facebook did make a change a change in response to user
feedback, however-random members of other people's friend lists are no longer
displayed when someone searches for them on the Website.
"We're always sensitive to what our users feel and
think," Sparapani said. "I don't think anybody at Facebook thinks we've
got it right 100 percent of the time."
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