Privacy

5 Reasons Google+ Is A Privacy Accident (Disaster?) Waiting to Happen

July 22, 2011
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5 Reasons Google+ Is A Privacy Accident (Disaster?) Waiting to Happen

1. You think it has better privacy controls This is number one, hands down, the biggest reason its a problem waiting to happen. The pure enthusiasm for a new product and your belief that you are “safer” will lead to you to share more believing that you have better control. 2. It’s still in Beta.  Beta means beta, which means there are bugs that haven’t been worked out. It also means that this isn’t the finished product, things could change. 3. The follow vs friend vs circle confusion. Anyone can “follow” you by adding you to a circle even if you don’t reciprocate.  This is weird hybrid of Twitter & Facebook. We already know people don’t understand complicated privacy settings. Twitter: your account is either public or private and you know which one it is.  Yes it’s possible on Twitter to repost a tweet from a private account. Facebook: you must request a reciprocal agreement of friendship. If I deny that request you can’t follow me.The default settings for posts and status updates is “friends only”. So let’s say I intend to post my “party friends” but inadvertently post to all. Eek! Yep that’s bad, but it still only goes to the people I’ve allowed

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Latest Facebook Privacy Violation – It is Now Broadcasting Conversations by Publishing The Content of Recent Activity

December 13, 2010
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Latest Facebook Privacy Violation – It is Now Broadcasting Conversations by Publishing The Content of Recent Activity

There was a time when one of your Facebook account or privacy settings allowed you to disable your “recent activity” from appearing in the newsfeed or on your wall. That went away sometime in the latest year (with profile update 10102029309808098, I think). Facebook completely removed the option to hide your recent activity and instead what you now saw was something like “Bobbi Newman wrote on John Doe’s wall” I and a lot of other people were annoyed by this. I don’t need Facebook notifying all my friends each time I talk to one of them. Some people just learned to deal with the feed, others like me, deleted all of this activity when they get back to a computer. Last week Facebook started rolling out its latest and greatest profile update. At first I was merely annoyed with it. Why is my job, education, current city, hometown and langauge front and center on my profile. Don’t my friends already know this? It really felt like another push from Facebook to be The One Site. It bothered me because I know a lot of  new people are using Facebook everyday, people who don’t understand Facebook’s privacy settings, agenda and policies.  They aren’t looking to showcase their

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How Far Do You Go to Reduce Drama and Protect Your Privacy on Facebook?

November 10, 2010
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How Far Do You Go to Reduce Drama and Protect Your Privacy on Facebook?

Earlier this week I came across this post Risk Reduction Strategies on Facebook in which danah boyd talks about the practices teens undertake to reduce privacy issues and drama on Facebook.  I found it fascinating, not just because of the efforts they put into it, its not easy, but because I do a few of these things and I don’t know of anyone else who does. My efforts seem a little pathetic next to theirs. One of the girls deactivates her account anytime she’s not on Facebook, these keeps people from posting on her wall and browsing her content when she isn’t around. Another deletes all activity shortly after its posted. I delete all “recent activity” posts immediately or as soon as I return to a PC.  It annoyed me to no end when Facebook removed the setting that allowed me to turn this off. I delete old photos, not all of them, just ones I don’t want up any more for one reason or another. Though I probably will delete everything from 2009 soon.* I delete old status updates, again not all of them, just ones whos moment has past. What efforts do you make to reduce potential drama or

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How to Disable Facebook’s Newest Feature: Places. Yes, The Default Setting is Enable

August 19, 2010
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Today Facebook rolled out it’s newest feature, Places, to US users. It allows you to check in at venues on using the Facebook app on your smart phone a la Foursquare or Gowalla. Facebook goes one step further, it allows others to check you in and you to check others in. Don’t want your friends checking you in? You need to disable this feature, this video from Lifehacker shows you how. Don’t care? Enjoy! Bookmark on Delicious Digg this post Share on FriendFeed Buzz it up Share on netvibes share via Reddit Share with Stumblers Tumblr it Buzz it up Subscribe to the comments on this post Print for later Tell a friend

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Top Ten Links Week 21

May 31, 2010
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Top Ten Links Week 21

My personally selected top 10 from the links I shared on Twitter from 5/21/2010 thru 5/27/2010. Ok I’ll confess right off the bat, I cheated, there are 12 links this week.  I just couldn’t cut them down. A couple of these deserve their own blog post so shame on me for not giving them the attention they deserve. 1. How (and Why) to Stop Multitasking - great article from Peter Bregman with some clear reasons why you should stop multi-tasking A study showed that people distracted by incoming email and phone calls saw a 10-point fall in their IQs. What’s the impact of a 10-point drop? The same as losing a night of sleep. More than twice the effect of smoking marijuana. Doing several things at once is a trick we play on ourselves, thinking we’re getting more done. In reality, our productivity goes down by as much as 40%. We don’t actually multitask. We switch-task, rapidly shifting from one thing to another, interrupting ourselves unproductively, and losing time in the process. Even better are the six things he learned the week he stopped trying to multi-task. I really need to do this First, it was delightful. Second, I made significant

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photo by Beth Tribe

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