Facebook mishandles privacy update

Last week Facebook rolled-out a new set of privacy settings. If you're a Facebook user you can't really have missed it. You were forced to at least review the settings when you logged-in.

It was billed as putting the user in greater control of their data and the information that they share with others, with advertisers and with 3rd party applications.

However, after many months of critical speculation and reassurance that Facebook was taking privacy seriously, it appeared that some of the new default settings automatically made personal information available to more, rather than fewer, people (irrespective of one's previous settings). For example the default setting for member photos and birthdays used to be limited to 'friends' however, the new default setting extends this to 'friends of friends'.

It's not all bad news, however. Where a user wants to review and adjust their privacy settings the new Facebook controls allow customisation of almost every element including what information is shared by applications.

We all understand that Facebook has to evolve its business model. Its core asset is the data it holds on its members. However, the fear now is that to drive advertising growth it will start to push members into sharing more than they want (or more than they thought they had shared) simply because most users simply won't want to spend the time adjusting complicated settings, or they simply don't understand the implications.

However, as both behavioural targetting and social search become the new battlegrounds for both social networking sites and the major search engines - understanding what personal information is accessible by whom will become increasingly important.