Last week popular social media site Facebook removed the ability for users to determine who could see their list of interests or personal information.
It used to be that Facebook promised, “No personal information that you submit to Facebook will be available to any user of the Web Site who does not belong to at least one of the groups specified by you in your privacy settings.” Last week’s changes to the system exposed this information without warning. Instead of interests being items you can list privately on your profile, each interest is now designated a unique Web page that your profile links to. This interest page will publicly display information from all the profiles linked to it. In effect, the only defense against having your profile made public is to not list any interests at all.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) issued a press release noting the change and offered step by step procedures for blocking information from being publicly released, available at http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/04/how-opt-out-facebook-s-instant-personalization.
EFF also noted that the changes don’t appear to benefit Facebook’s users: “An ordinary human isn’t going to look through the list of Facebook’s millions of …fans. [The list for each interest would be] far too large. Only data miners and targeted advertisers have the time and inclination to delve that deeply.”
