Perhaps the most important thing to remember about a social networking site is the word “social”. Despite the oxymoron of privacy settings on a social networking site, some people believe there is a level of privacy. This is a good example of two principals. First, you need to check your privacy settings on social networking sites and adjust them to the settings that best suit you. Second, you still don’t put any information up that you don’t want to be public.

When it comes to privacy and Facebook, in particular, you need to understand the thinking of the leadership of the company.



Mark Zuckerberg at one time called the people who trusted them with their information “dumb fucks”. One of many articles on that is here: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/05/14/facebook_trust_dumb/

The founder and CEO of Facebook even offered to share confidential user information.

Aside from the daunting task of even trying to keep personal information private on a social network, when you have such disrespect for users, as the CEO of Facebook does, it simply isn’t going to happen.

Do note in the article below that even users with their privacy settings set “correctly” had data revealed through their friends who did not set their own privacy properly.

I’m not saying don’t use social networks, but always keep in mind that everything you put there, regardless of privacy settings, is potentially public information.

Cheers,

Randy

This entry was posted by Greg Hewitt-Long on Wednesday, July 28. 2010 at 12:46. and is filed under General Security.