You all need to read this!
Just an FYI that I took from different sites on the web.
Protect yourself and your kids before you join these social networks
and be sure to READ the fine print first.
The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) called upon the Federal Trade Commission to investigate Facebook's recent changes to its users' privacy options. The changes, rolled out earlier this month, have been criticized by some for opening up previously masked personal details to the public eye.
"These changes violate user expectations, diminish user privacy, and contradict Facebook's own representations," EPIC's complaint (PDF) alleges.
EPIC's Facebook Complaint
The EPIC complaint -- supported by the Center for Digital Democracy, the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, and seven other advocacy organizations -- takes issue with Facebook's newly "public" treatment of such data as users' names, genders, cities, and profile photos. By default, EPIC points out, this information is now disclosed to search engines as well as to third-party Facebook applications.
The concern, according to EPIC, revolves around how this information could be used against a user's interests.
"More than 100 million people in the United States subscribe to the Facebook service," Marc Rotenberg, EPIC's executive director, said in a prepared statement. "The company should not be allowed to turn down the privacy dial on so many American consumers."
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Your name, profile picture, gender, current city, networks, Friends List, and all the pages you subscribe to are now publicly available information on Facebook. This means everyone on the web can see it.
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Criticism of Facebook
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Facebook's growth as an Internet social networking site has met criticism on a range of issues, especially the privacy of their users, child safety, the use of advertising scripts, data mining, and the inability to terminate accounts without first manually deleting all the content. Many companies removed their adverts from the site in 2008 because they were being displayed on the pages of controversial individuals and groups. The actual content of user's pages, groups and forums has been criticised for promoting controversial topics such as pro-anorexia and holocaust denial. There have been several issues with censorship, both on and off the site. The changes made by Facebook have been criticised, in particular the new format launched in 2008 and the changes in Facebook's Terms of Use which removed the clause detailing automatic expiry of deleted content. Facebook has also been successfully sued several times for violation of intellectual property rights. -------------------------
Facebook, the social networking phenomenon, has often come under fire for the way it gathers and claims ownership of masses of personal information that users submit to it. It is currently being investigated by the UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) after a user complained about not being able to delete their profile, even after terminating an account (1).
Like most Facebook subscribers, this disgruntled person might have failed to read the terms and conditions for sign-up. These clearly state that Facebook owns all the data users add to the site: ‘By posting Member Content to any part of the website, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to Facebook an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license to use, copy, perform, display, reformat, translate, excerpt and distribute such information and content and to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such information and content, and to grant and authorise sublicenses of the foregoing…’
