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!

Facebook just added a check-in or location-sharing feature, much like the one provided by FourSquare.com. The feature is designed to accomplish three main tasks:

• Help people share where they are in a social context
• See which friends are near by
• Discover nearby places and new places through friends’ profiles

But, by default, it also allows your friends to tag and publicize your location for you. It’s like being tagged in a photo, except the other person gets to share your location instead of your picture (even if you don’t want others to know where you are, and even if you are not there).

Here are some of the rarely discussed ways that Facebook Places will be used (now or in the future) that you might want to think about before checking in:

1. Facebook will sell (share) your current location and profile to stores in your vicinity so that they can server you hyper-targeted advertising (e.g., here’s a coupon for the store you are about to enter).
2. Friends who aren’t actually your friends will be able to check you in to questionable Places even when you are not there (the practical jokes for the Check Friends In feature are limitless)

The world is spying on you, and you don’t really even know it. A recent investigation by the Wall Street Journal concludes that spying on consumers in order to sell their data is one of the fastest-growing internet businesses. Here is a summary of the most striking findings:

“The Study found that the nation’s 50 top websites on average installed 64 pieces of tracking technology onto the computers of visitors, usually with no warning… the Journal found new tools that scan in real time what people are doing on a Web page, then instantly assess location, income, shopping interests and even medical conditions. These profiles of individuals, constantly refreshed, are bought and sold on stock-market like exchanges.”

The tracking software records and analyzes your browsing patterns. It knows if you’re surfing porn sites, researching bipolar disorder or watching teen movie trailers. With startling accuracy, it interpret’s these patterns and sells the information to websites, sometimes within seconds, that want access to your wallet. What’s the big deal, you ask? Why not let them market to us in highly targeted ways?

During a recent 60 Minutes interview, I was asked off camera to name the Achilles’ heel of an entire country’s data security perspective; what exactly were the country’s greatest weaknesses. The country happened to be New Zealand, a forward-thinking nation smart enough to take preventative steps to avoid the identity theft problems we face in the States. The question was revealing, as was the metaphor they applied to the discussion.

Achilles, an ancient Greek superhero — half human, half god — was in the business of war. His only human quality (and therefore his only exploitable weakness) was his heel, which when pierced by a Trojan arrow brought Achilles to the ground, defeated. From this Greek myth, the Achilles’ Heel has come to symbolize a deadly weakness in spite of overall strength; a weakness that can potentially lead to downfall. As I formulated my thoughts in regard to New Zealand, I realized that the same weaknesses are almost universal — applying equally well to nations, corporations and individuals.

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.

Steve Jobs unveiled Apple’s new iPhone 4 on June 7 in San Francisco. While the new features keep the iPhone at the forefront of technology, they also cause some privacy concerns.

One concern that carries over from previous iPhone models is the Always-on iPhone Apps that track your every move through the GPS navigation system. Back in April, Apple began allowing location-tracking applications to run in the background.  So, for example, companies like FourSquare, Yelp, and Facebook can continuously track your location, providing automatic notifications  to your friends when you are less than 1/2 mile away from them, if you allow them.

For example, I just had a highly confidential client meeting at the client’s corporate headquarters. To the  uninitiated, that means that the company I was visiting is probably having data theft issues (and has brought me in to help). If the media finds out that they are having these issues before the company has had a chance to start the damage control process, their stock will drop far faster than if they have prepared for the news to go public. If Facebook or FourSquare is broadcasting my whereabouts, my followers already know which company is having the problem, their competitors know it (if they are following my GPS broadcasts), and the media sits and waits for me to enter the building. Luckily, I’m not well-known enough for anyone to care, but just in case, I don’t broadcast my whereabouts. Other, far more influential people, do so without thinking twice about it. Which goes to show you that there are ways to utilize all of the cool new technology without letting it control you. With the right knowledge, you can take control of how your information is utilized.

Last week we announced that Facebook was changing their privacy settings – again! Well the new changes have arrived and should be active on your Facebook the next time you log in. The Instructions that will lead you through the new settings will be posted at the top of your mini-feed:

By clicking on the Learn More button you will be directed to the Controlling How You Share Page:

This page will contain a long list of descriptions of your privacy settings, what you can control and what is made public and out of your control.  Click Edit your privacy settings to make the appropriate changes to protect your information and what you want to share on Facebook.

Take the time to make sure you go step by step. Missing one option or click could mean sharing more information than you would like. Make sure you visit your Applications and Websites, Block Lists (if there is a specific person you are hiding your page from), and your Basic Directory Information.

Keep in mind, while the ability to understand your privacy settings has been made simpler, the settings themselves have not changed. You are still sharing information with businesses and advertisers with every “like” you click. Your interests are still linked and by choosing friends of friends you are still basically allowing everyone to view your profile.

Medical records are one-stop shopping for identity thieves. There is no need to slowly gather bits and pieces of someone’s personal information – it’s all packaged together: Social Security number, name, address, phone number, even payment accounts. Crooks have received everything from medication to a liver transplant using a stolen identity. And that’s only the tip of the iceberg! More than just medical treatment is at stake. Once a thief’s medical information is entered into your records, it’s extremely difficult to get rid of that information. It’s conceivable, for example, that at a later date, you’ll need a Type A blood transfusion but be given the thief’s Type B with dire consequences.

Identity theft of medical records has more than doubled since 2008, as stated in Javelin’s 2010 Identity Fraud Survey Report. It’s not difficult to imagine the misery that a million Americans have suffered during the past two years when their identities were stolen. And the Poneman Institute, in their National Study on Medical Identity Theft, states that another half million people loaned their insurance cards to uninsured family members and friends. The unsavvy lenders have incurred huge medical bills in this “friendly fraud”.

We need a Facebook Privacy Tool that isn’t written by Facebook. Currently, to effectively manage your privacy on Facebook, you’ve got to alter 50 settings with more than 170 options.

Maybe that is why Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg confessed on Monday that the quickly expanding social network had “missed the mark” when it comes to its complex privacy controls — and pledged to do better.

Can you imagine keeping up with all your Privacy Settings every time Facbook makes a change? Until Facebook figures it out, a new Privacy Awareness Group—ReclaimPrivacy.org, has developed a tool that scans your Facebook privacy settings to tell you how secure your personal information is. The tool comes in the form of a bookmark for your web browser.  Start by dragging the bookmark from the website above to your bookmarks/favorites. Then, log into your Facebook account, go to the privacy settings screen and click on the bookmark. After the tool scans your privacy settings in six areas—Facebook’s Instant Personalization feature; your personal data; contact information; friends, tags, and connections; what your friends can share about you; and whether applications can leak your personal data—it tells you what areas are secure and where you may want to consider tweaking your settings.