Privacy Settings Made Simple!

Here are some simple steps to ensuring your privacy while enjoying the fun of Facebook.

First, login to your Facebook account and and click on the Account link at the
top right of the web page. Next click on the Privacy Settings link. This page
allows you to view and modify all settings regarding your privacy.

Section #1 – Connecting on Facebook

Click the View Settings link to open this page. Once this page opens you’ll see
a number items. As of today’s date you’ll find the following sections Side note
- to modify a setting you simply click the option and a drop down menu will
appear:

Search for you on Face – We recommend this set to Friends Only

Send you friend requests – We recommend this set to Everyone. Any body can send
a request but you can deny them if you’d like.

Send you messages – We recommend this set to Friends of Friends to help you
identify people requesting your friendship.

See your friend list – We recommend this set to Friends Only

See your education and work – We recommend this set to Friends Only

See your current city and hometown – We recommend this set to Friends Only

See your likes, activities and other connections – We recommend this set to
Friends Only

Now you can click the Back to Privacy Button to return to you main Privacy
Settings page.

Section # 2 – Sharing on Facebook

You can select from the light blue box one of the standard options. You can
select Everyone, Friends of Friends, Friends Only, Recommended of Custom. We
suggest Custom because it gives you getting control. If you follow this example
you’ll need to look for the custom settings link just to the right of the Custom
check mark. This is a little hidden so make sure to look for it. Once you find
it click it. A new windows will appear asking what information you want to
share. Here are our recommendations:

Posts by me – We recommend this set to Friends Only

Family – We recommend this set to Friends Only

Relationships – We recommend this set to Friends Only

Interested in and looking for – We recommend this set to Friends Only

Bio and favorite quotations – We recommend this set to Friends Only

Website – We recommend this set to Friends Only

Religious and political views – We recommend this set to Friends Only

Birthday – We recommend this set to Friends Only

Places I check in to – We recommend this set to Friends Only

Include me in “People Here and Now” after I check in – We recommend you disable
this function

Once done you will want to click the Edit album privacy for existing photos link
and make sure to select Friends only for your albums otherwise anybody will be
able to see your photos.

Once you are done click on the Privacy link at the top of the page to return to
the main Privacy page.

At the bottom of the page you will be able to edit your settings for Apps and
Websites. There’s a lot of information and settings here so do take some time to
review each one carefully.

Here are a few important setting areas that are often missed by people
trying to maintain privacy on Facebook.

Info accessible through your friends

Click the edit settings button to see the following options and notice: Use the
settings below to control which of your information is available to
applications, games and websites when your friends use them. The more info you
share, the more social the experience.

Bio – We recommend you deselect this

Birthday – We recommend you deselect this

Family and relationships – We recommend you deselect this

Interested in and looking for – We recommend you deselect this

Religious and political views – We recommend you deselect this

My website – We recommend you deselect this

If I’m online – We recommend you deselect this

My status updates – Optional at your discretion

My photos – We recommend you deselect this

My videos – We recommend you deselect this

My links – We recommend you deselect this

My notes – We recommend you deselect this

Photos and videos I’m tagged in – We recommend you deselect this

Hometown – We recommend you deselect this

Current city – We recommend you deselect this

Education and work – We recommend you deselect this

Activities, interests, things I like – We recommend you deselect this

Places I check in to – We recommend you deselect this

Once done you can click the Save Changes button which will bring you back to the
Choose Your Privacy Settings -> Apps, Games and Websites section.

Next we suggest you visit the Instant Personalization section by clicking the
Edit Settings button. This section lets you see relevant information about your
friends the moment you arrive on select partner websites.

We suggest you Disable the instant personalization on partner websites. Once
you’ve done this click the Back to Apps button to return to Choose Your Privacy
Settings -> Apps, Games and Websites section.

Now, click the Public search Edit Settings button and disable this option. Click
the Back to Apps button to return to Choose Your Privacy Settings -> Apps, Games
and Websites section.

You can also edit your Block Lists at the bottom of the page.

Also, we suggest never listing your phone number otherwise people can in fact
capture that information for various uses. Here is a link from TechNewsWorld on
Facebook privacy and possible security concerns:

http://www.technewsworld.com/story/71662.html

That’s it for now. Watch for new Privacy setting issues frequently to make sure
you’re up to speed on the latest privacy issues and settings.

Well, here we have it. Makes you wonder how other companies compete against such fast moving companies like Google. At Yerasoft we’ve been watching and waiting to see the next big thing to be released by Google. Aside from the privacy issues I’ve written about previously, I think they chose the right platform to launch this phone. The Android OS seems to give the iPhone a run for their money and HTC is a very good hardware manufacturer. It will be interesting to see if the other phones using Android get firmware updates as quickly as Google’s Nexus One phone.

I’ll watch to see how this one turns out. If you’ve purchased a Nexus One phone and would like to add your two cents then please do so.

Having recently previewed Google Wave I see there is tons of room for improvement and it’s going to take Google a long time to catch the wave of social media.

High points of facebook:

• Easy to use
• Intuitive
• Heavily populated with social apps such as farmville or mafia wars which keep people not only entertained but also engaged with the media engine itself
• Realtime chat
• Great people locator and very open to the public
• Currently NOT total hyper-indexed giving people some control over privacy
• Robust photo sharing capability
• Mobile apps which make it easier to stay connected while away from your computer

High points of Google Wave:

• New and different
• Realtime live communication
• Integration of some of the google apps
• The message post system resembles most popular word processing software

These are just some basic difference and at face value I would think facebook is a much easier application to use plus the features far outweigh those of google wave. I think google has a long time to catch the “wave” before they become a viable competitor. How google wave handles hyper-indexing information and privacy will dictate how people feel about it in the future.

On a different note, we still wonder how google will meld google wave, chrome operating systems, mail and other product offerings that are free with paid advertisements. As I’ve written in the past, I’m n ot sure I want my personal social interactions indexed for all of google to review. In theory it’s not bad but what if someone had a priuvate series of conversations that ended being indexed by google’s hyper-indexing system?

I expect a great push for more social media interaction and as google heats it up so will facebook, twitter an dthe myriad of other social networking systems and social bookmarking sites.

We are the lucky ones to benefit from such an interesting play for public inclusion.

Sound off if you have anything to add to this article.

Now the big question… Has Google gone too far? In recent posts I’ve touched on privacy concerns, the looming Google monopoly, Google Chrome and various other privacy threats Google poses. Is it any wonder that there are such things as Google Hacks showing people how to use Google’s massive database to find flaws in code and showing hackers where to look? Don’t believe me? Spend a few minutes or Google and search for these Google hacks. Also, take a moment and look through YouTube videos to see what I’m talking about.

Now we enter the OPINION ENGINE discussion. As I said, Google used to be a good search tool but now, thanks to hyper-indexing and social media, it’s become an opinion engine. Who’s opinion you ask? Everyone’s opinion! If you search for something on the Google you’re just as likely to find false information than real information. If you find yourself looking at blogs, forums and other social media sites just remember you’re reviewing opinions rather than facts. Following opinions may lead to disaster if you’re not careful.

Do yourself a favor and look elsewhere for search. I hate to bring it up again but I find more relevant search results by using Bing.com. Heck, I almost sound like a Bing.com spokesman but I’m not paid to be one. I just like searching to find relevant information and not some social media site, blog, Tweet or forum post.

If you agree or have something to add please reply.

While reading a recent story in USA Today about Google’s current release of Google Voice I had to ask several questions about privacy and security.

Is it a good idea to use a service like this from a company that is already mining every piece of data about you they can? When I originally signed up for a Gmail account I was intrigued by this new e-mail
system and that we could only get it via invitation (Nice concept to make people want it even more). This new email service meant using it in conjunction with all of the other tools Google kept coming out with and for a while I didn’t think much about Google scrubbing my e-mail to advertise to me. Today it’s a different story. Recently I posted an article about Google and Hyper-Indexing
which dives deep into the daily lives of people using social networks such as Facebook and Twitter.

Enter Google Voice. Several things became glaring klaxons as I read the article (http://www.usatoday.com/tech/products/2009-07-14-voice-phones-google_N.htm?csp=usat.me).

1. “There was a lot of jealousy from my friends, who’ve been waiting for their number,” says Caulfield, an instructional designer at Keene State College in New Hampshire.*
2. Google Voice is Google’s attempt to remake how we think of the phone. It lets you use one new phone number to tie together your various numbers: cellphone, home phone, business line. Friends call
   your Google number, and all the other phones ring — you choose which one to answer.*
3. Voice mail flows to all of the phones, along with a free transcription by Google.*
4. Google announced Google Voice in March. It is rolling it out gradually to people who request a number. Last week the company began releasing “tens of thousands” of numbers a day to fulfill those requests, says Vincent Paquet, a Google senior product manager. Demand is such that Google Voice invites are being auctioned for as much as $100 currently on eBay.*
5. It’s the e-mail transcription service that motivated Bryan Nichols of Bellevue, Wash., to sign up for Voice. “It’s really slick,” he says.*

Point #1: There’s a lot of jealousy from friends who have been waiting. Same tactic used to get a Gmail account in the beginning.

Point #2: Google wants the public to remake how we think about phones? Google wants everyone to use Google for everything. I have issues with the privacy and control of a monopoly. At some point this has to become an issue everyone is aware of.

Point #3: Free transcription? I don’t want my calls recorded and certainly don’t want a transcript of my calls. This is just too much data floating somewhere in some database.

Point #4: Auctioned for as much as $100? While I think, from a marketing perspective, this is amazing but it’s reminiscent of the how Gmail was launched. Make people want it so bad that they’re willing to buy it on eBay? Interesting approach.

Point #5: Again, email transcription is not really slick. Privacy anyone?

All of this plus the announcement of Google Chrome OS (cloud computing) has made me look at the way the internet has grown or changed over the years. I will be keeping our current phone systems and will  avoid cloud computing if at all possible. I’ve switched to  Bing.com in hopes that it will gain popularity and return us to the search of old. There’s one suggestion I have for search and it’s make a search for
social media and leave those results out of general search. This gives people the opportunity to see opinion as opinion and not as fact.

*Some portions of this post © protected by USA Today.

Posted using ShareThis

Ad revenue is the biggest form of money transfer on the Internet. Consider Google’s AdWord campaigns and AdSense programs and even more invasive is the Google’s Gmail program.

Gmail scans your personal e-mail and targets ads based on the content of your personal messages. As a Gmail user you don’t have an option to opt out of these ads or invasions of privacy.

Recently Google has stepped up the aggressiveness of its AdSense program by shifting their tracking cookie from an opt-in to an opt-out system of consent, where opting-out requires the consumer to know how their mysterious system works.

Beyond the basics of privacy we should all consider why search exists in it’s current format. At one time Google was pretty pure in it’s processes but now it seems to be moving in every direction. I’m pretty sure I don’t want Google to be able to track my every action via some tool or another. Here is an article from FoxNews: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,346770,00.html about a couple suing Google for their street view program for invasion of privacy. One has to wonder how far search (Google) should go. In the past when I wanted to search for something I went to Google and found pretty good results. Today the search results are littered with Social Media posts and any number of forum and blog posts. We’re all aware of how Google handles Hyper-Indexing but one must ask; how much is too much?

I think it’s time for Google to focus on real search. Maybe separate social media/blogs & forums from other search results and allow the user to include social media/blogs and forums within the search instead of it being part of the results. Filtering data or giving the people the opportunity to refute results might also help with the sheer bloat of Google’s search results.

Technorati code: 39aqeihjx8

How has Web 2.0 changed the world we live in? Having the ability to communicate in multiple directions or with multiple people at the same time. Our mobile devices (iPhone for me) has given me the opportunity to do all of these things with ease. From my phone/mobile device I can look up friends, search the Internet, post messages, take pictures, watch the stock market, check the weather, look to see if my favorite movie is playing at the theatre, see what’s on TV, listen to music, buy music and movies, transfer files to a nearby iPhone user, use a cool program called Shazam (this program takes a small music sample and sends me the name of the song, the ability to see/hear it on YouTube and purchase it on iTunes), text message, Tweet, Facebook, Voice recordings etc. So the question is, has it become too much? Are we too dependent on technology? Have we lost our ability to communicate without our devices?

While I love how beneficial parts of the Web 2.0 movement are, I also find myself wishing it were flat again. Finding accurate information was so much easier then. Now it seems the Internet is the work of many people, which in itself is not bad, but accuracy is critical.

On the flipside, is the information on the Internet worth being called information? Is it a compilation of thoughts or facts? Too often, when searching on the most popular search engines I find conflicting information and sometimes I wonder if I spend more time trying to determine what is accurate or not. Has the Internet become a massive amount of haze? As you can see from the Merriam-Webster definition, haze means dullness and vagueness of the mind or mental perception.

It will be interesting to see how the world views change as we all continue to post our moment by moment thoughts on the Internet. I think it will be even more interesting to see out social media sites like Facebook take on Google or other search giants. Live, updated information posted by everyone against an algorithm or complicated search process. We all know Google’s relationship to wikipedia so we know there’s change coming. How will Facebook fare in the market space wars of search and live search? How will these social network sites shape our search future or how we use/play with the Internet?

Please take a moment and sound off.
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