Protecting Your Privacy with the New Facebook

On April 22nd, Facebook announced that its business model was undergoing an extreme overhaul.  In the past, Facebook users commonly shared content by linking to it on their Facebook homepage. However, integration with other sites has been ongoing, with popular sites such as YouTube adding a feature that automatically publishes “favorited” videos to a user’s Facebook wall. Now, Facebook has taken this concept one step further.

Starting on April 22nd, buttons such as ”Like” “Thumbs Up” or ”Recommend” will begin popping up all over the web. These buttons will allow Facebook users to recommend articles, videos and other content to their Facebook friends. When navigating to a site while logged in to Facebook, a user will be able to see which stories their friends “liked” or recommended for reading. Some sites, such as CNN, will even provide a live “feed” that allows Facebook users to track which stories their friends are reading. Clicking on one of these buttons causes this activity to be published to a user’s Facebook wall.

Sites that will be integrating Facebook features include:

• CNN
• The Washington Post
• engadget
• The Wall Street Journal
• CBS
• ESPN
• Bild.de
• ABC
• The Globe and Mail
• aminado
• yelp
• MarketWatch
• tripadvisor
• USA Network
• The New York Times
• LIFE
• Flixster
• Mydeco.com
• Sephora
• Chow
• El Mundo
• Pixar
• Fandango
• TIME
• IMDb
• Scribd
• Sky
• OMGPOP
• Kiva
• Slate
• livingsocial
• Levi
• Simply Hired
• CNN Money
• MTV

Security Consequences

There are several concerns presented by this new feature. One of these concerns is that when a user “Likes” something, their facebook profile photo will be used to identify this action on the site. Also, it greatly expands the amount of personal information that will be shared with “third party” websites. It’s possible for this data to be exploited, sold or used for marketing purposes.

Know Your Facebook Privacy Settings

By default, this sharing feature is enabled in your Facebook profile, unless you have manually disabled it. To disable the sharing of your Facebook information on Facebook’s “Partner Sites”, navigate to:

Account > Privacy Settings > Applications and Websites > Instant Personalization > Edit Setting

Once you have reached this page, uncheck the “Allow select partners to instantly personalize their features with my public information” box. This disables the feature. However, even if you uncheck this box, be aware that your friends may still share your Facebook information with other sites if they are using this feature. To disable them being able to share this info, you must manually block the application (this is the fine print on the “Instant Personalization” settings page).

Future Changes

This move gives Facebook a serious advantage over other social networking tools, such as Twitter. In the future, you may see other social networks mirroring these changes by Facebook, and increasing the ability for you to share your personal information all over the web. The question is, how will this ultimately affect online privacy?

An Example of How the New “Like” Button Works

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