Because Facebook privacy is such a hot topic lately, I thought I might write something so you know where you can check your privacy settings, or at least get a laugh out of what other people aren’t making private. With the amazing (that’s right, I said A-M-A-Z-I-N-G) capabilities of open graph and all the changes that came with it, we all want to make sure we are keeping our personal lives under wraps. After all, no one REALLY wants to know your bathroom habits via status message unless they’re purposely friends with you. And even at that… really?
Open Book– remember the aforementioned website where you can laugh at other people’s expenses due to what they are displaying publicly? Yep. This is it. This uses the Facebook API available to developers. All you have to do is type in something to search, and it will bring you random updates with that word. I won’t even get into what you COULD look up but…go try it out. It might make you double check your settings.
Facebook on Zesty.ca– This is pretty simple. You need to know your user ID…and if you don’t know it, there’s a little search box on the right where you can find it. Once you find your ID you can see what is visible from your events, posts, groups, pages etc. It’s simple and straight to the point.
ReclaimPrivacy– This is a pretty awesome service. Go to the homepage and follow the instructions. Drag the little button into your toolbar and click it when you get into Facebook. It will show you what’s connected, what’s not connected, and give you the option to fix it. I had instant personalization turned on and it gave me the ability to turn it off right from the results, but I think there must be an error because it didn’t fully deactivate. I bet Facebook is blocking it. ReclaimPrivacy is quick to fix errors so full functionality for that one option will most likely return ASAP. There is also a small disclaimers saying that ReclaimPrivacy is not held accountable for any troubles we might run into with Facebook due to use of this. Hmmmmm.
I hope these few sites will give you some confidence (and laughs) about privacy settings. After all, Open Graph is our future; we should embrace it. What you choose to share, and not share, can be controlled by you. Even though Facebook is shady-like and automatically opts you in to their changes (ask me how I feel about that. I dare you), you do have the option to opt-out.
Move over Nike. New public saying of 2010- “Just opt-out!”
