Considering the continuing debate over evolving privacy standards that has come to prominence with the move of social networking websites towards the mainstream, and in particular Facebook’s receding standard of privacy documented by the Electronic Frontier foundation in a handy timeline. Going back to 2005 and seeing

No personal information that you submit to Thefacebook will be available to any user of the Web Site who does not belong to at least one of the groups specified by you in your privacy settings.

seems like an anachronism given Facebook’s current business model that encourages sharing with Third-Party applications and sites. While Facebook’s future redefinitions of privacy may only be speculated by those outside of the company, the framework for the site’s ongoing reconstructions of privacy’s meaning comes through in the 2006 privacy policy.

read more »

Today at Facebook’s f8 (pronounced “fate” developer conference the social networking Goliath unveiled an new system for following their users outside of the Facebook site, and it could end up making the internet a very ugly place. In the wake of their privacy overhaul last December Facebook announced an expansion of the class of information to be considered public by default including a user’s hometown and current city. They also lifted the 24 hour restriction on how long application developers could hold on to user information allowing them to store user information they collect indefinitely.  Expanding what they consider public information and allowing partners to hold on to users personal information longer is just the tip of the iceberg.

Connections

In a change announced earlier this week on the Facebook blog activities and interests listed on a user’s profile information will be linked to “community pages” centered around those interests. The EFF covers implications of this new connections system very well on their Deeplinks blog.

read more »