Mark James looks at the changes to Facebooks privacy policy and their “privacy basics” page. Should other sites follow in Facebooks steps? How will privacy needs be catered to in the future?
Firstly they announced that they will be allowing a dedicated Tor connection to their profoundly popular social media site.Facebook have really been making ripples in the privacy world over the last few months.
Now they’ve gone and taken the traditionally jargon filled privacy settings page and turned it into a colourful, plain English and user friendly guide to privacy settings.
Plus there’s a cute dinosaur to give you a helping hand! What more could you ask for?
Keep it secret, keep it safe
“Privacy in apps especially Facebook has always been a complicated matter and most often ends up putting end users off: trawling through all the settings and choosing if they should or should not tick that badly explained and often unhelpfully described option.” Explains ESET security specialist Mark James.
“The average user wants to have privacy like everyone else but often finds setting it up too complicated and thus does not bother.
“The other problem is as an adult trying to explain to our children what to do when we don’t even understand it ourselves.
“The new Facebook app gives us an easy to understand page giving some good privacy options with a button for more settings (advanced) for those that need it.”
If you do want to take a deeper look at your privacy settings and make sure they’re working as intended then have a looksee at ESET’s Social Scanner.