Facebook Offers New Deals: The Cost is Your Privacy
According to TIME Newsfeed, Facebook is taking on a new marketing giant – Groupon. Groupon.com has gained popularity extremely fast due to the huge discounts they offer users on a daily basis. Their average discount ranges from 50% to 80% off of food, services, shops and entertainment. They boast over 18 million subscribers and have sold over 12 million deals. It is no wonder that Facebook would want a piece of the action — when Groupon featured clothing giant GAP on their site, they sold 400,000 deals, making them $11 million.
But there is a catch: Facebook Deals only goes hand in hand with Facebook Places. In order to receive the promotions, you have to use their location sharing app and “check in” to get the deal. In other words, to gain the benefits offered by Facebook Deals, you have to sacrifice more privacy. Groupon only asks users for their city location in order to tailor deals to their area. To take advantage of a deal, you must share your address and billing information, and that is done on their secure checkout site.
Facebook: Press 2 For Law Enforcement
I received an email last night from a well-known TV anchor wanting my input on a new Facebook issue. He’d read that when calling Facebook Headquarters, the automated attendant comes on and gives you options to reach each department, and the second option was to press 2 for “law enforcement.”
It could seem odd to many, but it’s true. If you call the Facebook Headquarters (650-543-4800) and reach the switchboard, the 1st option is “For customer support, press 1″ and the second option is “For law enforcement, press 2″. Law enforcement comes ahead of business development, marketing, press, and employment verification in the list of options.When you press 2, the next message says: “This message is only for members of law enforcement. Please note that due to a very large volume of incoming calls, the current call back time is two to four business days. For a faster response, please leave your work authorized email address… A member of Facebook’s security team will email in a timely manner.” Which means that Facebook is very busy fielding calls from law enforcement.
The anchor, and the rest of us, want to know why!
How to Disable Facebook Places
Last week Facebook introduced a new location tracking application called Facebook Places. This gives users the ability to check in with Facebook from their mobile device and update their friends (and even tag their friends) on where they are. What many Facebook users don’t realize is that this tool is currently activated by default, and in order to turn it off, users have to go in and adjust their privacy settings. Until you do that, your friends can check you in to different locations (and you may not even be there!).
Here is the step by step process to disable Facebook Places:
1. Log into your Facebook account, and at the top right drop down menu under Account click Privacy Settings.Once you are in Privacy Settings you will see this screen:
2. Click Custom (if that isn’t your selection already) and then click below 0n Customize Settings.
3. You should see the following screen, where you will need to make 2 changes – first, to Things I share and then to Things others share. Under Things I share click on the drop-down box next to Places I check in to click custom and chose to make this visible to Only Me.
5. Scroll down on the Customize page to Things others share:
Sileo In the Media
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