Abusing Facebook's "Publicly Available Information" • Hacker News Board

Re: Abusing Facebook's "Publicly Available Information"

#11

Post by foldr » Fri, Dec 11, 2009, 1:43 AM UTC

potatolicious wrote: post #5

sysk wrote: post #2

Someone should invent a new buzzword for people obsessed with privacy.

This isn't obsession - I was shocked yesterday when Facebook prompted me to update my privacy settings, and I found that in several places they chose (by default) to loosen privacy in significant ways. This is deliberate and sneaky - if someone just clicked through the dialog they'd automatically sign up to broadcast to the world what was before set as private communication.

All you have to do is select the "old settings" option for everything and it keeps it all the same. I don't know what is so hard to understand.

Re: Abusing Facebook's "Publicly Available Information"

#12

Post by nathanhammond » Fri, Dec 11, 2009, 1:48 AM UTC

foldr wrote: post #11

potatolicious wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't obsession - I was shocked yesterday when Facebook prompted me to update my privacy settings, and I found that in several places they chose (by default) to loosen privacy in significant ways. This is deliberate and sneaky - if someone just clicked through the dialog they'd automatically sign up to broadcast to the world what was before set as private communication.

All you have to do is select the "old settings" option for everything and it keeps it all the same. I don't know what is so hard to understand.

That is not the case, as explained here: http://dotrights.org/what-does-facebooks-privacy-transition-...

The discussion on that blog mirrors my experience with the tool, I had to reset most of my things to "Only Friends" after going through the tool.

Re: Abusing Facebook's "Publicly Available Information"

#13

Post by pxlpshr » Fri, Dec 11, 2009, 1:48 AM UTC

scott_s wrote: post #10

My entire Facebook profile has been public for a while now. I've known for a while that this is the direction FB was going in, and I find it's much easier to answer the question "Am I okay with the whole world seeing this?" than weighing the probability that someone I didn't intend to see something will see something against the content of what I want to say. Everything you put on the internet is public. If you're un…

You're telling me, stuff I put on the internet back in 1998 is still public. My family had quite the laugh one time at a reunion when some of the old stuff came to light...

To your point, being transparent on Twitter and Facebook helped us secure the investor that we did. I think we would have had a harder time if it wasn't for these "tools". I use to view Facebook more privately when I was in college, but now there's Fb Connect + more interest in my career over sharing personal life tidbits.

There's a relative level of privacy that I never have to question when I keep personal stuff, personal...

Re: Abusing Facebook's "Publicly Available Information"

#14

Post by potatolicious » Fri, Dec 11, 2009, 2:00 AM UTC

foldr wrote: post #11

potatolicious wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't obsession - I was shocked yesterday when Facebook prompted me to update my privacy settings, and I found that in several places they chose (by default) to loosen privacy in significant ways. This is deliberate and sneaky - if someone just clicked through the dialog they'd automatically sign up to broadcast to the world what was before set as private communication.

All you have to do is select the "old settings" option for everything and it keeps it all the same. I don't know what is so hard to understand.

Other posters have mentioned how this fails also - but more egregiously, when I went through the wizard several key options were by default not "old settings". Anyone breezing through the tool would have gotten caught.

Re: Abusing Facebook's "Publicly Available Information"

#15

Post by djb_hackernews » Fri, Dec 11, 2009, 2:10 AM UTC

colinplamondon wrote: post #6

cmelbye wrote: post #3

It was a huge shock when I realized what Facebook was doing when they prompted me to update my privacy settings. Before, most of my profile was private. In the new privacy wizard, though, they had automatically selected for my posts (e.g. status updates, links) to be visible for everyone. Is this their plan for beings "more like Twitter"? Tricking people into making their posts visible to the world? I was about to ju…

The thing that annoyed me was that I knew it was coming, I knew they were trying to trick me into making all my stuff public, and their little wizard still turned on a bunch of my photo albums to public. I had to spend five minutes combing through their privacy tools to fix all the things their privacy wizard got wrong. My preferences aren't that hard- keep everything private to everyone but friends of friends, perio…

To be fair, if you ignored the wizard then your privacy settings went unchanged.

Re: Abusing Facebook's "Publicly Available Information"

#16

Post by tokenadult » Fri, Dec 11, 2009, 2:13 AM UTC

scott_s wrote: post #10

My entire Facebook profile has been public for a while now. I've known for a while that this is the direction FB was going in, and I find it's much easier to answer the question "Am I okay with the whole world seeing this?" than weighing the probability that someone I didn't intend to see something will see something against the content of what I want to say. Everything you put on the internet is public. If you're un…

My entire Facebook profile has been public for a while now.

Isn't part of the change that until yesterday no one's friend list was public in quite that way? (Yeah, I mean besides the "app gap" that continues to annoy the ACLU and the Electronic Frontier Foundation.) I was amazed at how much more I could find out about random people who are recommended to me as friends today than I could the day before yesterday. It seems to me that this opens up big space in the market for a Facebook competitor that can get privacy right.

Re: Abusing Facebook's "Publicly Available Information"

#17

Post by johnl » Fri, Dec 11, 2009, 2:13 AM UTC

Facebook should go in the opposite direction. They should make their information public but forget about getting down to the individual level. They still have to figure out how to monetize what they have. Do themes and summary levels to start with and market that, protecting the user's privacy.

Re: Abusing Facebook's "Publicly Available Information"

#18

Post by foldr » Fri, Dec 11, 2009, 3:08 AM UTC

potatolicious wrote: post #14

foldr wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All you have to do is select the "old settings" option for everything and it keeps it all the same. I don't know what is so hard to understand.

Other posters have mentioned how this fails also - but more egregiously, when I went through the wizard several key options were by default not "old settings". Anyone breezing through the tool would have gotten caught.

Yeah, it does help if you actually read what's on the screen...

Re: Abusing Facebook's "Publicly Available Information"

#19

Post by foldr » Fri, Dec 11, 2009, 3:09 AM UTC

nathanhammond wrote: post #12

foldr wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All you have to do is select the "old settings" option for everything and it keeps it all the same. I don't know what is so hard to understand.

That is not the case, as explained here: http://dotrights.org/what-does-facebooks-privacy-transition-... The discussion on that blog mirrors my experience with the tool, I had to reset most of my things to "Only Friends" after going through the tool.

The link you give doesn't say anything about settings in the new privacy wizard failing to take effect. I set everything to "old settings", and when I went to my privacy page it had indeed kept all the old settings.

I expect people experiencing this just forgot to click one of the radio buttons or something. It would be better if the wizard defaulted to "old settings" for everything, but it really isn't that hard to use.

Re: Abusing Facebook's "Publicly Available Information"

#20

Post by horseass » Fri, Dec 11, 2009, 3:11 AM UTC

colinplamondon wrote: post #6

cmelbye wrote: post #3

It was a huge shock when I realized what Facebook was doing when they prompted me to update my privacy settings. Before, most of my profile was private. In the new privacy wizard, though, they had automatically selected for my posts (e.g. status updates, links) to be visible for everyone. Is this their plan for beings "more like Twitter"? Tricking people into making their posts visible to the world? I was about to ju…

The thing that annoyed me was that I knew it was coming, I knew they were trying to trick me into making all my stuff public, and their little wizard still turned on a bunch of my photo albums to public. I had to spend five minutes combing through their privacy tools to fix all the things their privacy wizard got wrong. My preferences aren't that hard- keep everything private to everyone but friends of friends, perio…

Never trust 'wizard' characters who offer help on computers. They're a species of tricksters that either purposely mislead you, like microsoft's internet connection wizard, or, when they have more experience points, cast evil spells like this one on facebook.