Facebook has come under under fire recently for its recent string of privacy-unfriendly practices, from its “privacy transition” that took away privacy controls to “instant personalization” that instantly shares personal information with third party pages without the user's consent.
Problem #1: Giving Users Control Over All Information They Share Via Facebook
Users share a wide range of information via Facebook: friends lists, photos, education and work history, religious and political leanings, relationship status—the whos, whats, whens, hows, and whys of their lives
What Changed Today:
For profile information, you can now use a single click to change all of their settings to “Everyone,” “Friends of Friends,” “Friends Only,” or Facebook's “Recommended” settings. You can also still fine-tune your own settings. Having controls that are actually easy to use—even for unsophisticated users—is a significant improvement.
Problem #2: Sharing Information With Third Parties Without Users’ Opt-In Consent
Third party applications and websites have access to a huge amount of information about individuals .Facebook has increased the amount of information these apps and pages can access and taken away some of the few controls users had to prevent this access. And Facebook recently took this one step further with "instant personalization," allowing some websites to access Facebook user information without giving notice to the user first
What Changed Today:
Facebook addressed third party sharing in two ways. First, it made it easier for users to opt out of “instant personalization” entirely by providing a single privacy control to disable instant personalization via friends as well as directly. Second, Facebook has restored the option to opt out of third party sharing entirely.
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