Monday, May 17, 2010

If You Have a FaceBook Page...

This is to let you know they had to change their privacy settings. Effective today, you have to manually go in and change the "Applications and Websites" setting. Here is the copy from a friend of mine's post.

"As of today, there is a NEW PRIVACY setting called "Instant Personalization" that shares data with non-Facebook websites and it is automatically set to "Allow." Go to Account>Privacy Settings >Applications and Websites >InstantPersonalization, and uncheck "Allow". BTW if your friends don't do this, they will be sharing information about you. Please copy & paste"

By the way, when I went to change this feature, the description said "Allow websites to gain all my information as soon as I get to their site."

Yeah. We all know how bad it is to keep things secure over the internet anyway. CHANGE this setting. IMMEDIATELY. (I'll wait.)

I used to work for America Online when it first came out. I was there when they celebrated their first 1 million simultaneous users. I got a pin for it. Hooray... But what bothered me, was while I worked the security department for a time, people were constantly calling in asking how to get their information off of the internet.

* You don't ever give out information if you don't know the source.
* Never open an email from someone you don't know.

Do you know, I still have to stress this to my teenager? And my husband. Only because neither is as internet savvy as I am. Understandable, really, but now with my mom new to the World Wide Web, I have to remind her as well.

So yeah... go and change that setting right away. Your privacy is very important and I can't believe FaceBook got away with allowing our information to be given like this. Thousands have already deleted their account, but the damage has already been done. And now to automatically have the "Allow" button checked???

FaceBook keeps me more connected with my family than MySpace did. (I'm a horrible letter writer, even email... go figure...) I don't want to drop it but I certainly don't want any fool to see any of my information either.

Hate to start off the week with a finger shaking post in your face. Ah well. I worry about all of my friends, so forgive the post. Have an awesome week everyone!

11 comments:

Beth Zimmerman said...

I went and unchecked it. Thanks for the heads up.

Tahereh said...

thanks for this. you're a blessing. everyone needs this heads up!

Mia Hayson said...

OhMyGosh, thank you for reminding me! I'm seriously considering deleting my account, like COMPLETELY, because of all the hassle it causes. Gah.

Anyhow, THANKS. You're a gem ;~)

Anonymous said...

I unchecked this last week after a notice went around friends' status updates. In the past month fifteen of my friends have deleted their accounts over the way FB behave with our privacy and settings.

I appreciate they are a free to use networking site, but that does not give them the right to do what the hell they like.

Jamie Gibbs said...

Just looked at mine, and it's all good. Thanks for the heads up, much appreciated :)

B. Miller said...

Thanks for this post and getting the word out about these settings!

RHYTHM AND RHYME said...

Thanks for the advice, much appreciated.

Yvonne.

Mel Chesley said...

No worries. Anytime I see privacy issue related things, I will always drop a post. I agree, I don't like that they feel they can do whatever the hell they like either. Ah well. Glad everyone is good!

Creepy Query Girl said...

I changed it! - A while ago though when I saw this warning going around facebook. I love your new layout!

Vicki Rocho said...

I'm grateful there are people like you who share this information because I would never think to go nosing around my settings to check them out.

Thank you!

Unknown said...

Well, thank you for that. I try to keep other people's nose out of my business. And usually I catch these kinda' things, but I missed it.

Thank you so much for letting me know! I'm letting my mum know tooo.