On March 1 there was much ado about Facebook's refusal to stop plans to make users' addresses and phone numbers available to 3rd party application developers. This was shocking to many, but should it have been? Really?
Make no mistake about it, Facebook is in the information collection business. They have made it abundantly clear over and over that they don't consider it an invasion of privacy to share your information. Most every platform upgrade comes with hidden privacy invasions. Even their default, suggested privacy settings make any privacy advocate's head spin.
You volunteer to play in Facebook's sandbox when you join. It's free, which means that they can do what they want. If you choose to share personal, private information without implementing Facebook's very comprehensive privacy controls, you do so at your own risk. They won't feel one bit guilty about that.
Facebook creator, Mark Zuckerberg, has been very forthcoming about his beliefs that social media should be open and transparent, and that's the network they are working to create with Facebook. He makes no apologies for any perceived compromise of privacy. He stops short of actually saying it, but one might conclude that Facebook's philosophy is that if you don't like it, don't join Facebook.
On the other hand, to Facebook's credit, they have developed solid privacy controls that can be fine tuned down to a very detailed level. Unfortunately, most people either 1) don't realize what information they're sacrificing by not implimenting privacy controls, 2) don't care, or 3) are intimidated by the process of implimenting the controls and keeping up to speed on changes.
To a large degree it's human nature to be realtively complacent. Most people trust in what they're told and don't further investigate. Facebook understands this and takes advantage through a suggested setting that many people believe is too open, so they settle on a "Friends Only" setting that provides the illusion that this insulates their personal information against all but their own circle.
Unfortunatley, those people are lulled into a false sense of security. "Friends Only" is a good start, but there are plenty of additional settings that compromise the security of your information, are turned on by default, and are unaffected by "Friends Only."
The best advice is to take control of your own privacy. Read blog posts, watch videos, attend a seminar, and poke around yourself. Hire a speaker to come into your place of business and give a presentation about Facebook privacy, so your employees can all benefit.
Be proactive, but stop complaining, because Facebook owns the game. They make the rules and we're just players. We're not paying for this incredible networking and communications tool, so Facebook is free to do whatever it wants. Impliment the privacy controls available, but also be mindful that there is a possibility that everything loaded onto Facebook may become public one day. There's no guarantee that it won't, so you might want to be discriminate about what you do when you're playing in Facebook's sandbox.
