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!

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:

Facebook has the Population of the Third Largest Country

Wednesday, July 21, 2010 marked a big day for Facebook. CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg announced in a blog post that the social networking website hit over 500 million users in only 6 years.

If you take a look at the worlds largest countries in terms of population (as of today according to Wikipedia) you find that China is #1 with 1,339,130,000, India is #2 with 1,184,513,000 and #3 is the United States with only 309,944,000. This would mean that if Facebook were a real country with their population of 500,000,000, then it would clearly surpass the USA for the #3 ranking.

Many believe that Facebook will hit a billion users in less than a year by looking the rapid growth they have encountered since their founding.  With their fast expansion the privacy issues on the website keep mounting as well. Make sure when you are using Facebook you are using it with the best possible protections – your common sense. Click here to learn more on Facebook Safety for users and parents of users.

According to a recent Yahoo! article, Facebook has created a new “Panic Button” for London users to help protect children on the social networking site. This new function gives the youngsters the ability to easily report a problem or suspicious activity to the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP) and Facebook.

The Panic Button will automatically appear on the homepage of users between the ages of 13 and 18 years old. Recently Facebook has been scrutinized because of their relaxed privacy controls and lack of protection for all users, including children. This marks another effort by Facebook  to attempt to calm users concerns and team up with other organizations to offer protection to younger participants. In the US, Facebook is teaming up with the Parent Teacher Association to help keep children informed and safe while using the website.

Facebook vice-president Joanna Shields added: “There is no single silver bullet to making the Internet safer but by joining forces with CEOP we have developed a comprehensive solution which marries our expertise in technology with CEOP’s expertise in online safety”.

It is important to be educated when dealing with any form of social media or social networking website. You should know the ins and outs, pros and cons, risks and rewards to using these online tools.  For more information on Facebook Safety and protecting your children online, check out our Facebook Safety Survival Guide.

A new article in PC world discusses why the privacy settings on Facebook don’t matter – it instead blames the user for their own data breach. It recommends that those on Facebook should use their common sense and think in the long term. By controlling what you share and only sharing what is responsible Facebook is no longer in charge of your privacy.

Why Facebook Privacy Settings Don’t Matter

John C. Dvorak – I find it endlessly amusing how so many articles are written about Facebook and its cavalier lack of concern over privacy issues (case in point: Read Dan Costa’s column). A large community is up in arms over the fact that Facebook consistently changes the way it operates and constantly resets the privacy settings of the users to nil, as in NO PRIVACY.

This amuses me because it seems as if the majority of Facebook users don’t even know about or care about the privacy settings. Once in a while some old lady is flabbergasted by the fact that anyone can write on her wall, sure. And once in a blue moon some teenage girl says she “didn’t know” her teachers could see her comments. All the while the users of Facebook are increasing by the millions as the complaints are increasing by the thousands, thus amounting to nothing of consequence.

As a parent you are often worried about what your kids are being exposed to on the Internet. Apparently so are Facebook and the PTA. They have teamed up to teach parents and children about responsible Internet use. They plan to cover cyber-bullying, internet safety and security and “citizenship online,” according to a news release.

“Nothing is more important to us than the well-being of the people, especially the many teenagers, who use Facebook,” said Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating officer.

Facebook is the number one social media site with over 500 million users and a minimum age requirement of 13. Even that requirement can be easily fudged because Facebook has no way of verifying a user’s age besides asking for their birth date when they register. Parents are having trouble deciding whether to let their children join Facebook prematurely and what they should be cautious of if they do so.

Learn more on Protecting Your Children Online.

It is important to be educated when dealing with any form of social media or social networking website. Social networking is immensely powerful and is here for the long run, but we must learn to harness and control it. You should know the ins and outs, pros and cons, risks and rewards to using these online tools. Because teens and children don’t necessarily have the life experiences to recognize the risks, parents must educate themselves and pass that knowledge on with open and honest discussions on Facebook and Online Safety.

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There is no final word on how to use Facebook safely. Here’s why: social networking and the web change too quickly. The social network you use today is not the same one you will use tomorrow or next month. The privacy settings, functionality, connectability and features are constantly evolving, which means that almost no one has a handle on every aspect of this topic. Those who tell you that they have the final answer are probably selling you something you shouldn’t buy.

This Survival Guide is an evolving document that I started writing for my young daughters and my employees, and is an attempt to give you a snapshot of some of the safety and privacy issues as they exist right now. Social networking, texting, instant messaging, video messaging, blogging – these are all amazing tools that our kids and employees use natively, as part of their everyday lives. In fact, they probably understand social networking better than most adults and executives. But they don’t necessarily have the life experiences to recognize the risks. I’d like to make their online vigilance and discretion just as native, so that they learn to protect the personal information they put on the web before it becomes a problem. Social networking is immensely powerful and is here for the long run, but we must learn to harness and control it.

This quote by Daniel Lyons in Newsweek establishes exactly why Facebook drags it’s feet on privacy. Why write more when he has summarized it so eloquently (emphasis mine)?

The most important thing to understand about Facebook is that you are not Facebook’s customer, you are its inventory. You are the product Facebook is selling. Facebook’s real customers are advertisers. You, as a Facebook member, are useful only because you can be packaged up and sold to advertisers. The more information Facebook can get from you, the more you are worth.

Read the full Newsweek article: Who Needs Friends Like Facebook?.

Order the Facebook Safety Survival Guide to make sure you and your children are protected online.

As of last week, Facebook has added two new ways that you can connect to things you care about. The problem with these changes is that they takes away the user’s ability to control who can see these connections. The first change made is the addition of Community Pages described by Facebook:

Community Pages are a new type of Facebook Page dedicated to a topic or experience that is owned collectively by the community connected to it. Just like official Pages for businesses, organizations, and public figures, Community Pages let you connect with others who share similar interests and experiences.

The addition of these new pages mean that certain parts of your profile, “including your current city, hometown, education and work, and likes and interests” will now be transformed into “connections,” meaning that they will be shared publicly. If you don’t want these parts of your profile to be made public, your only option is to delete them.

The second change that they made is More Connected Profiles, which links personal information about yourself, such as your likes and interests, favorite books, music and movies, to other users with the same personal information. Facebook explains it like this:

Young job-seekers are hiding their Facebook pages.

In today’s economic climate, more and more individuals are searching for jobs. Many job-seekers are just beginning to realize that managers looking to hire them can easily Google their name to find Facebook profiles, tweet history and vast quantities of online information that they would probably rather keep a bit more private.  This is even more prevalent with recent college graduates who are entering the job market for the first time. With tough competition from so many qualified candidates, employers are turning to Facebook to help them sift through resumes. While some profiles are innocent, many have pictures, posts, and more that could possibly disqualify them from getting a job before they even walk into the interview. A new article by CNN discusses how more and more job-seekers are choosing to hide their Facebook profiles by changing their names (assuming an Alias, in spy terms) in order to keep a clean digital image of themselves on the web.

Remember when it comes to anything on the internet – Facebook, Twitter, Linked-In, Myspace, blogs, or anything you post online -  all Posts are Public, Permanent, and Exploitable. While changing your name on your Facebook profile is a quick fix, you should really be aware and limit the type of material that you choose to expose. Read the privacy and security settings and adjust them to best protect your online presence.