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Study: Facebook users sharing more personal info despite increased privacy concerns
Carnegie Mellon University conducted a study following more than 5,000 Facebook users over six years, from 2005 and 2011, and found that changes in the social network's privacy policies caused users to share more -- not less -- personal data. Lest you think this means that users suddenly trusted the site more, Carnegie Mellon says that Facebookers became more and more protective of their personal details as the social network grew in membership -- and that the uptick in shared information is a result of increasingly granular privacy settings. If you recall, Facebook introduced new in-depth privacy controls in 2010, and the study found that the release of these new settings corresponded to users sharing more personal data, both within their network of friends and with strangers and third-party applications. It's been quite some time since the new privacy policy was introduced, but the university says the sample group didn't reduce the amount of info shared with non-friends on the network, even as of 2011. The takeaway? Well, it's safe to say that more privacy controls doesn't equal more vigilance in protecting personal data, and it's certainly not a stretch to call Facebook's settings confusing. The researchers' comparison of the struggle for privacy to the eternal plight of Sisyphus? That might be a touch more dramatic.
Facebook shutting down facial recognition in the EU, gets stamp of approval from Ireland DPC
Earlier this year, Ireland's Data Protection Commissioner, a body whose decisions impact Facebook's policies in Europe at large, made several recommendations to bring the website in line with regional privacy laws, calling for greater transparency on how users' data is handled and more user control over settings, among other things. The DPC just officially announced that Zuckerberg et al. have for the most part adjusted its policies accordingly. The biggest change involves the facial recognition feature, which attempts to identify Facebook friends in photos and suggest their names for tagging. The social network turned off this functionality for new users in the EU -- and it will be shutting it down entirely by October 15th. It's not like Ireland, home to Facebook's European HQ, is the first to give the site flack about such features: Germany was having none of it when the site introduced facial recognition last summer.
Facebook's new Recommendations Bar pops up, just wants to be liked
Facebook's Recommendations Box sits passively on many websites, allowing us to engage or ignore as we see fit. But too much of the latter option has led to something slightly different: the new Recommendations Bar -- a pop-up variant which, when integrated by your favorite page, plugs site-specific links based on your friends' thumbs and shares. The Bar is similar to the in-house recommendation pop-ups we're all familiar with, but adds a like button for posting the current page to your timeline. It shouts much louder than the Box, so it's no surprise that in early tests the new plug-in produced a three-fold increase in click-throughs. In this case, privacy wasn't an afterthought -- Bar integration, like the Box, is at the site's discretion and sharing pages is very much on your terms. Just try not to accidently hit that like button during your daily scan of Bieber's homepage.
Facebook's Find Friends Nearby feature falls off the map, leaves buddy locating to other social apps
We're happy to chat up our Facebook friends on the web, but empowering them to track us down in person makes that virtual social experience feel a bit too real. Perhaps that was the reasoning behind the mysterious disappearance of the company's new Find Friends Nearby feature, which bit the dust yesterday just as quickly as it first appeared. During its hours-long tenure, the new tracking tab didn't give precise friend location information, but did provide a list of buddies in an undisclosed vicinity, making it possible for some not-so-top-tier contacts to realize that you're still in Tulsa, and didn't actually make that move to Timbuktu. Whatever the reason, Find Friends Nearby is now very much lost, but it could theoretically make its return at any point in the future. For now, you'll need to return to keeping an eye on acquaintances the old-fashioned way.
Facebook's Find Friends Nearby: GPS lets you give nearby mobile users a Friendshake
A mobile Facebook feature called Find Friends Nearby, previously code-named Friendshake, is coming out of development and will soon be on its way to your iOS or Android phone. Perhaps springing from the social network's acquisition of ambient social app Glancee, it's still fairly primitive, merely navigating to a browser page on your device, where it will show you a list of other users within a given, undisclosed radius. Presumably, the benefit is to let you quickly add someone in your purview like Find my Friends, although we're interested to see what privacy settings are on offer. You never know, Mr. Zuckerberg could be tempting the privacy gods -- and governments -- once again.
Bing's 'friend effect' search tool uses Facebook 'Like' button to affect your results
If you'll recall, Google has been pushing social integration into its search algorithm quite aggressively for the past few months; lest we forget the versatile +1 button. Not to be out done by Team Google's spider-crawling and link-snatching ways, Microsoft has announced full-on Facebook integration for Bing. They're referring to it as, the "Friend Effect." So, what's the difference? While Google's approach aggregates its standard search results with shared content from the social networks you've manually linked to your account, Bing's approach relies upon the ol' Facebook "Like" button. Basically, Microsoft found that most people usually want opinions from friends and family before they make a decision on something. So by including friends' and families' Facebook-based Likes in the search results the company lets you know their input without ever having to ask. At the same time, Microsoft has added a universal like button to the Bing Toolbar that you can use to mark your approval on anything you find on the web, which in turn, can help out your friends' searches in a socially, antisocial kind of way. Bing uses "Collective IQ" of the internet hive-mind to optimize search results should your friends lack opinions about your interests. Bing's Friend Effect search integration is pretty interesting stuff, and it could definitely offer a compelling alternative to Google's social search approach if your Facebook "friends" can truly be classified as such. Check out the videos after the break if you want more detail, and be sure to let us know what team you're on in the comments below.
How-to: manage your Facebook privacy settings with three simple lists
I used to love Facebook. I was in law school at Wisconsin when it launched, and everyone I knew on the site was basically a peer -- people who I'd known well or at least met in person at some point. Then... I graduated. Suddenly having a Facebook account full of pictures from blurry nights in Madison and Pulitzer Prize-caliber dirty jokes from my friends wasn't so awesome anymore -- especially once I started working for Engadget and lots and lots of people I didn't actually know (or, somewhat even worse, only knew professionally) started looking at my personal page. So I needed a system -- a way to still use Facebook to share personal stuff with friends, professional stuff with colleagues, and awesome stuff with everyone, all without blurring any lines or accidentally sharing too much with people I don't know. digg_url = 'http://digg.com/security/How_to_Effectively_manage_your_Facebook_privacy_settings'; Luckily, it's not so hard to do -- you just have to make effective use of a Facebook feature called Lists. By grouping all your friends into lists you can make sure you're sharing the right information with the right people -- pictures from last night's epic party with your actual friends, sanitized vacation photos with co-workers, almost nothing with strangers. But just making a bunch of random lists won't work -- you need a plan, and we've got one for you that involves making just three lists to solve all your Facebook privacy worries. How? Read on for step-by-step instructions.
Facebook's new privacy settings explained
Sure, it took Facebook a little too long to realize its users wanted easy-to-use privacy controls instead of an ever-increasing array of complex and granular settings that most people ignored until it was too late and photographic evidence of their rampant immorality was being emailed directly to their employers, but even the new system has some quirks, and it's always going to be up to you to manage what information you're publishing. It's not complicated stuff, but we promise you a quick peek at this little intro course our friends at Switched put together will be worth it in the end -- you don't want Spring Break 2006 to ruin your life all over again, do you?
