Tuesday, June 1, 2010

Facebook Addresses Privacy Issues- Again

After receiving much criticism over the current privacy settings on Facebook, founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has vowed to make changes. Zuckerberg has been encouraging users to share more information about themselves through Facebook, but most Facebook users have resisted.

The new privacy settings will be made available to Facebook users in phases. The new settings are meant to be much simpler, allowing users to make changes in just a few clicks. What had previously been about 50 settings has been condensed to 15 settings, Zuckerberg said.

While Zuckerberg's plan to make changes in response to negative feedback sounds like a positive move, I will be skeptical about the functionality of these changes until I see them. I recall hearing before one of the previous rounds of privacy setting changes that the new settings would allow us to control the privacy on virtually every piece of information we shared. However, the changes seemed to give users less control than before and caused concern about outside applications and marketers gaining access to our personal information.

Zuckerberg stated that this next phase of changes will be the last for a while. Are you confident that Facebook will have ironed out the privacy issues once and for all with the new settings or do you think issues will still remain?

For more information on Facebook's upcoming privacy changes, check out "A Guide to Facebook's New Privacy Settings"

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