Most Likely to Take Over the World

What does Facebook know about you, and what is it telling the rest of the world?

Recently, much ado has been made about Facebook’s privacy settings, and that’s not just from the Libertarians and the tin-foil-hat people. In fact, according to a recent post on Mashable, the privacy setting fiascos have left Facebook with one of the worst customer satisfaction ratings in its category, one point ahead of MySpace (who took the honor of being worst, for obvious reasons.)

The 2010 American Customer Survey Index conducted by ForeSee Results gave Facebook 64 out of 100 points in a customer satisfaction survey; that’s lower than any other business in its category. However, it’s not at the bottom of the social media heap; MySpace received one point less.

ForeSee Results CEO Larry Freed says that “privacy concerns, frequent changes to the website, and commercialization and advertising” are responsible for the low rating.

–Samuel Axon, “Facebook Among Web’s Worst in Customer Satisfaction”, Mashable, mashable.com

However, while Facebook continue to constantly change their website for no discernable reason — even recently playing with the idea of removing my favorite feature the “Most Recent” news feed — you can combat the private information purge of Facebook by using 4 pages, all located under the Account Tab to the far, top-right of your Facebook page.

1. Edit Friends: This may seem like a strange place to start when talking about privacy online, but your privacy is only as strong as its weakest link, and for many people, that’s your friends list. Sure, some people take pride in maxing out the number of “friends” on Facebook, but those people tend to not be too concerned with hiding embarrassing or important information from employers, hiring managers, or litigious ex-spouses.On the menu on the far-left side, click “All connections”. Now, go through those connections, including the companies you friended instead of fanned, and ask yourself “Do I trust this person enough not to share or leak my information?” If the answer is “No” or worse still “I don’t know,” it’s time to ax them.

   If you want to keep those friends of a friend, you can get a little more sophisticated and create individual Lists for trusted associates, and in later settings only allow certain lists to see certain things. Click on the “Add to List” drop box next to a name, scroll down until you either find the appropriate list or type in the name of the list in the empty box at the bottom. I have my friends divided up into lists such as “High School” “Past Employers” “Clients” “England Friends” etc. but yours can be as simple as “Trusted” and “Not Trusted”

2. Account Settings: There are a lot of important settings that you should check out under the Account Settings section of your Account Tab, but we’ll just go through the basics here. In Account Settings there are seven tabs to become familiar with:Settings: Want to deactivate your account, change your password or your name? This is where you do it.Networks: This lists the networks you’ve joined based on your alumni status, work history, and location. Don’t want the entire Penn State alumni community knowing about the killer keg stand you did over the weekend — when you were supposed to be networking for your company? Keep your networks in mind when posting.Notifications: Want to know when someone on Facebook sneezes? Well, there isn’t an app for that yet, but this is where you can set your account up to receive emails and text messages based on other events including status updates, birthdays, being tagged in a photograph, and more. I, personally, am notified of almost anything involving my name on Facebook–it makes it easier to untag myself in compromising photographs that way.

   Mobile: Want to be able to post to Facebook by phone? Add your phone number under the mobile tab and you can “receive friend requests, messages, wall posts, and status updates on your phone, or upload photos and videos on the go.” I have no idea why you’d want to know that Liz is having a Lemon party or Bob’s having a spaghetti breakfast, but if your identity and brand is that important, you might want to keep tabs on your network through this feature.

   Language: Set your native language here.

   Payments: Farmville addicts and individuals who buy little buttons and graphics to paste on each other’s walls can use this tab to monitor their credits, payment information, etc.

   Facebook Ads This page is very important to people interested in Privacy. Not only can you set the page to disallow ads to use your information when broadcasting to friends (for example: Wegman’s, a company I’ve friended might want to put “Elizabeth Likes This!” under its ad when targeting my friends. I can turn off their ability to do that here.) This is also where you stop ads from using your profile photo.

3. Privacy Settings: Quite possible the most important and misunderstood setting in the accounts tab is the Privacy Setting. If you’re serious about Facebook privacy, this is where a good chunk of time should be spent!

   Basic Directory Information: Click on the link to “View settings” to determine who can search for you, send you messages or friend requests, and see your education, work, interests, and activities information.

   Sharing on Facebook is where we put some of the prior information like custom lists to work to keep privacy high. Select “Custom” from the types of settings in the Left-side column, then click on “Customize settings” like to get down an dirty with your privacy. Now, you can select from a drop down list who gets to see the things you share, the things others share about you, and your contact information. The settings range from the exhibitionist “Everyone” to the super-private “Customize” setting. Selecting “Customize” will bring up a pop-up of fine-tuned selections–it’s here where you can select to share certain information with friends only, specific networks, or even “Only Me”. There’s even an option to hide information from specific people.

   Block Lists At the bottom of the page, there are links for Applications (which we’ll go into more in-depth on the next settings page) and Block Lists. If there are people that you want to completely block your profile from (in my case, embarrassing relatives), this is where you want to go once you know their name on Facebook. Pop in their Facebook name here, and not only will you never show up on a search in Facebook while they’re logged into their account, but they won’t be able to see your posts on mutual friends walls, you won’t appear as tagged in any photo they view, and you won’t even show up on the lists of mutual friends! I cannot recommend using this feature enough, especially when you’re concerned about your employer finding out about the things you get up to after hours!

4. Application Settings: You know all of those fun games, quizzes, and websites you’ve visited or used via Facebook or Facebook Connect? Well, they’re leaking a lot more information than you realize. Take the ACLU’s “What Do Quizzes Really Know About You” to see how much information leaked out when you found out how many Disney characters you can name.

   Worried about those apps and quizzes now? Well, this is where you control them!

   First, from the drop down box marked “Show:” select “Authorized” to see all of the applications you’ve authorized to see your data. 90% of the time, you’ll be shocked to realize who is seeing your information and how much access they have!Next to each application, there are important links for you to get familiar with.

   Click on “Edit Settings” to see what information that application can access, click on “Profile” to see the application’s profile on Facebook, and finally click on “X” to get that “Which Team Am I?” quiz to stop viewing your information.

This is only a basic guide to privacy within Facebook, but it should be enough to help you staunch the bleeding of your personal information to the world at large.

This post is part of Problogger’s 31 Day Challenge series. Take the challenge!

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It seems to happen every time there is a major media blowup about some child who was murdered, raped, or pushed into suicide that the Helen Lovejoys of the world come out with their torches and pitchforks, screaming “Down With the Internet! Won’t Somebody PLEASE Think of the Children!” Recently, the untimely and tragic suicide of Phoebe Prince, who was bullied, harassed, and physically assaulted in school and in public, became the new cause du jour when someone discovered her online profile was filled with mean messages urging her to end her life, not unlike Megan Meier, who was bullied into suicide by the mother of a school frienemy, Lori Drew.

Wikipedia is a parent-approved website on the Internet. As you can see, it is safe for children.

Because, you know, it’s not the perps who are responsible for their behaviors. It’s the Internet!

When I was thirteen, I was picked on relentlessly in middle school, much like Phoebe Prince, for being the new girl, so I sought out friends on local BBSs (anyone remember those?), and began riding my bike all over Burlington County, NJ to meet up with people I spoke with on there.

“But it was different then!” people cry. Yes, it was different then — there were no parental controls; most parents didn’t understand networks and the budding internet back in 1993. There was no profile with a name, face, age, or any other identifiers. There was no COPPA Act. It was just myself and a stranger, chatting in a DOS-based system with now way to prove that Tigger2 was actually the anguished, angst-ridden teenager I said I was. It was possibly the least safe time to be flitting around the internet, but there I was, and here I am today.

By the time I was 16, I had an online journal which is how most of the people on Facebook and Twitter know me, as the precocious teenager whose entire coming-of-age the read as a live-action Catcher in the Rye or (as I’d prefer to be compared) The Bell Jar. I posted pictures, I named names of friends, locations, and my high school. I told people when and where I was going to summer camp. As time progressed, I learned about libel and other serious concerns due to kind adults who would inform me that an entry I wrote, if found by others, might get me into trouble, but that was long after I began writing. In 1996, it was an age of few controls and a lot of wild west-style lawlessness on the internet; and yet, I came out of that one unscathed too.

You might call me lucky, as many concerned adults who read my site did, but I never felt lucky. I took calculated risks. I dated three men — one of whom is now my husband — I met via my website, only meeting up with my long-distance loves after I saw photos and webcam conferences and then, finally, called them at the home number they’d give me. My first online boyfriend, who ended up being my prom date and possibly one of my first truly serious relationships in life, used to joke with me that for all I knew, he was some sort of crazed “ax murderer.”

“For all you know,” I would reply, “so am I.”

My ex-husband, who would get drunk and twist my arm or pinch me so hard I’d bruise, who once hit me in the head after throwing a full can of soda at me, I met in the real world, via my place of employment, like “normal” people.

My husband, David, was a reader of my first online journal which started on Geocities and migrated from there to my own domain, bitterfame.com. He knew me during my first marriage, watched that marriage disintegrate, watched me date other men, and finally asked me out via Trillian. We “dated” for four months before we ever saw each other in person. As of this June 16th, we’ll be married for four years.

My story is not unique. When I attended the first ever conference for online diarists, JournalCon 2000, in Pittsburgh, PA., many people there knew me and each other online from the internet, and mostly only as readers of the others’ lives. There were dozens of us staying in the same hotel, parting together, eating together, and none of us had any idea what the other was like until we met up in the Westin Hotel that Friday night.

Amazingly, no one was murdered, raped, or kidnapped!

The truth is, the internet isn’t to blame when children are abused. In fact, as both the Megan Meier and Phoebe Prince stories point out, it’s the people you know in real life that are the most dangerous to a young person, who are able to inflict the most harm. This should surprise no one: children are most often abused and kidnapped by a parent, relative, or someone else known to them than by a stranger, and that statistic holds true for rape and murder among adults as well.

I remained safe online not because I was lucky, but specifically because I grew up on the internet, never told that the internet was a bad or scary place, that I often had candid conversations with my Dad about what I was doing online. (If it was forbidden, that NEVER would have happened!) I also probably wouldn’t have been comfortable enough to date men I met through my website, and I felt safer with them than I did with random strangers my friends would pick up at bars, because I was Internet street-wise from learning safety at an early age. (And, possibly, because my parents and friends weren’t online to harm me!)

Kids today are growing up with the internet too, at a time when it’s MUCH safer and more controlled (overly so) than it was when I was growing up. Those who don’t learn to navigate it with a parental figure helping them when they’re younger are going to be behind, and when they do get away from Mum and Dad, they’ll be as reckless as most college freshmen drinking and fucking themselves into oblivion because it was kept away from them for so long. It’s the kids who didn’t know how to use Facebook who’ll put up pictures of themselves smoking from a bong and then wonder why they got busted for possession, who put every banal thought on Twitter and end up with a stalker because they didn’t keep their Foursquare friends in check.

My suggestion to any parent who’s scared of the Big, Bad Internet is to stop being afraid of it! Allow a 13-year-old onto Facebook to interact with his/her friends with the following rules:

• A parent must actively supervise at all times.
• The profile is completely locked down except to friends and relatives.
• Before a person can be added as a friend, parental supervisor MUST approve that person, and only friends from school/the neighborhood/IRL activities/etc. who are personally known to the child will be allowed to be friended. Give the person the “Over For Dinner”: ask yourself, “Do I know this child, relative, child’s parent, or teacher well enough that I’d invite them over for dinner? If the answer is no, then hit the ignore button.
• BIOS lock-down the computer (if PC. I’m sure there’s similar security for Macs) so that the child cannot turn on the computer in the middle of the night and get around the HUGE security holes in Windows that even I was able to exploit at that age.

This is a very Vogotsky-inspired approach to the internet: by supervising actively and being involved in decision making, you model the skills needed for that child to eventually be successful on the internet by his or herself — and at an age where that modeling will still be successful, rather than at 16 or 17 when it’s far too late.

It’s like training wheels — I’d never advocate giving a child a bike and letting them go crazy, but I’d also never advocate not owning a bike because of the slim margin of chance that a car might some day hit them or a pedophile may grab them.

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Photograph by Alexandra Pais/New Jersey Local News Service

Students in high schools all over the state of New Jersey staged walk outs and old-fashioned sit ins today in protest of Governor Chris Christie’s planned cuts — including teacher layoffs — in education spending and plans, approved by tax payers in the recent school board elections, to cut spending in districts across the state.

While students in this prom- and graduation-filled season focusing on something larger than themselves that isn’t a reality television show is, in and of itself, amazing what’s more amazing is that the students organized this via Facebook.

The event was organized by 18-year-old Michelle Ryan Lauto — a Pace University student who once attended high school in New Jersey. Lauto decided to take action after Governor Chris Christie announced that he would be cutting $820 million in educational funding for next year, according to the Hartford Courant.

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U.S. law enforcement agents are following the rest of the Internet world into popular social-networking services, going undercover with false online profiles to communicate with suspects and gather private information, according to an internal Justice Department document that offers a tantalizing glimpse of issues related to privacy and crime-fighting.

I am a huge privacy advocate, member of the ACLU, civil libertarian, and the sort of person that hates when people (such as commentors below) say “go ahead! I have nothing to hide!” when it comes to the government invading the privacy rights of others.

Having said that, I have no problem with Federal agents looking at information that individuals freely and voluntarily make public. (continue reading…)

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A question posed on LinkedIn, in anticipation of Twitter’s monetization plan to be announced at SXSW this weekend, asked “How long has Twitter got left?” This was my reply:

Twitter will die when they monetize, because there’s no way to sustain their current popularity without monetization. Unfortunately, their options to monetize are limited and will either fail or drive away users. Banner & site ads will fail because most users access twitter via another twitter app or client online. They could keyword every tweet & insert adword links, but that would be too intrusive. Ditto for “sponsored by” text appended after each posts ” 7 minutes ago via CoTweet ” text. Merchandising rarely provides enough income for a website. (continue reading…)

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