Facebook Status Update Leads to Robbery
When you are ‘friends’ with people on Facebook that you are not actually friends with, how do you know whether they have good intentions?
A recent segment on CNN discusses the risks that you may be taking while updating your Facebook status. You don’t know who is looking at your private information because it’s really not private – it’s public. Keri McMullen found this out the hard way after she posted a simple status message that she was going to see a band with her fiance. It only took the burglars calling the venue to find out what time the show was starting to know when they could break into her home. The burglars showed up 35 minutes after the McMullens left for the concert.
It is that simple. You post a casual message to your “friends” that could turn into a nightmare where, like Keri, you lose upwards of $11,000 in personal property. They were lucky that they had cameras installed in the home and were able to catch the perpetrators on film. After posting pictures of them on her Facebook page (a good use of social networking), another friend recognized the intruders as Keri’s high school classmate.
Facebook Changing Privacy Settings – Again!
Facebook faced major backlash last month after they implemented a new tool that linked your interests to sites across the Internet and allowed third parties access to your information unless you specifically deny such access. As we mentioned in yesterday’s blog about an easy way to configure your privacy settings in Facebook, there are 50 different settings with more than 170 options!
Many Facebook users have been extremely vocal about their frustrations, even organizing efforts to quit the quickly growing site. According to CNN Facebook will be reversing these changes today to make them simpler for the user with the intent of increasing user privacy.
“I can confirm that our new, simpler user controls will begin rolling out tomorrow. I can’t say more yet,” Facebook spokesman Andrew Noyes told CNN in an e-mail Tuesday.
In a piece on Monday in The Washington Post, Zuckerberg said upcoming tweaks — which could be implemented as early as Wednesday — will make it simpler to use these privacy controls and and provide an easy way to turn off all third-party services. Keep your eye out for these changes, but if you are concerned about your current privacy settings try this new Facebook Privacy Tool.
Read more on the CNN article: Facebook to Announce Changes after Privacy Settings Backlash
Facebook Launches New Security Feature
Facebook has announced a new security feature that focuses on keeping users’ information safe from hackers attempting to gain access into your account.
The feature was announced last Thursday, and is similar to how secured banking sites work — they only let you access the site from approved computers. If you are attempting to log onto your Facebook account from an unknown computer, device, or location, Facebook will notify you via email and lock down your account in case it is under attack. To regain access, you will have to follow the link in the email which will lead you through a security check to verify your identity. They will ask you a few security questions and have you acknowledge that it was in fact YOU (or if it wasn’t you, then you notify Facebook at this point) trying to access your account.
This change comes on the heels of one of the largest Facebook privacy issues to date. The social networking site that services over 400 million people made headlines recently when they chose to link users’ likes and interests to organizations and others on Facebook. This raised major concerns that they were no longer acting in the users’ best interest.
How Do I Delete My Facebook Account?
How do I delete my Facebook account? I get asked this question every day. At my speeches, by my clients, by my friends and family. It used to be that people no longer wanted the mundane information overload that Facebook promotes. But now they are looking at it from a privacy perspective – they no longer want their thoughts, pictures, and videos shared indiscriminately with people they don’t know.
The defections have been sparked by Facebook’s continuing march to sell your private information (with only your implied consent, i.e., simply by using Facebook, you agree to their terms) with an ever widening circle of people who are NOT YOUR FRIENDS (advertisers, data miners, and unfortunately, identity thieves). Many of the corporations I speak for have me include a component on safe social networking because the information their employees are posting (personally or professionally) are damaging their corporate brand and profits either through data leakage or as a beach-head for social engineering and other types of fraud.
In past posts, I have pointed to the tools at your disposal to tighten down your Facebook security settings. But suddenly, that is no longer complete enough for people, as Facebook continues to erode what little privacy you can control. Just look at the privacy related Facebook news in the past few weeks:
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