In the last month, I have posted “status updates” on my Facebook profile highlighting such mundane details of my life as my foray into vegan desserts and cutting my dogs nails. I’ve also linked videos, encouraging friends to watch the new Karate Kid trailer and I’ve left comments on walls, asking my friends if they knew where to find brooches (you know – big antique pins). Little did I know that these posts could not only be seen by my friends and family and fellow Facebook-ers (of which there are about 400 million) but my activity is now totally public information. This means, according to the definition of the “everyone” accessibility that I allowed on my Facebook profile, that my activity may be accessed by anyone on the internet through search engines, companies can target me based on my updates, and that my information can be imported and exported by Facebook and other sites without my knowledge. Oh…kay?
Like most Facebook users, I heard about the changes that were being made to privacy settings in December 2009, “read” the notices that popped up in my account, and promptly discarded them. According to Facebook owner Mark Zuckerberg, most people don’t care as much as they used to about privacy, and if my case is indicative, he’s right. With that in mind, Zuckerberg and co. have rolled out a new program where integrated sites that you visit while logged into Facebook can load applications to your profile and track your activity without your knowledge. Websites are also using Facebook integration to install the signature “like” buttons on their own websites. When Facebook users click the “like” button on an outside site, it posts a news feed update on their profile and stores their information. With this new program, a person’s Facebook profile essentially becomes a cache for information about their personal preferences, their friends, and their influences that will allow businesses to graph and market to them based on their specific wants. This new privacy policy is automatically applied to all Facebook profiles, so those wishing to keep their information private have to change their account settings in order to opt out – this practice is ruffling some feathers. It may be true that most people don’t care too much about privacy anymore, but the way Facebook went about implementing this change makes it seem like they were hoping to make money off of user’s ignorance.
The whole thing sounds a bit like a creepy 1984 marketing tactic, but it has some admittedly attractive implications. If Facebook, for example, were to share my musical preferences with a distributor who in turn notified me of new albums and collaborations by my favorite artists, that would be pretty fun. Or, if they could recommend a new restaurant opening in my area, I’d have no problem with that. Most of the information shared on Facebook is pretty benign, but people can always stand to be more cautious about posting personal information on public sites.
Word of these new privacy policies come in the wake of a recent Facebook security lapse that caused a bit of scandal. Last week, a bug in the Facebook system allowed users to see their friend’s chat sessions. The chat feature was shut down as soon as the bug was discovered, but it wasn’t done quickly enough to stop people from exploiting the issue. This security lapse calls into question the ability of Facebook administrators to be responsible with private information like chats and messages in personal boxes in the face of all this innovation and rapid expansion. Glitches that leak personal conversations like this are unacceptable, especially if Facebook users have a new, highly interested audience to worry about – marketers. Facebook’s progress in integration is exciting, but they should proceed with caution – the stakes are higher with so many businesses looking on, and they stand to lose more if they continue to have security issues.