New Facebook Changes Raises Concern Over Privacy
After so many controversies related to its applications and virus related issues Facebook, World's No. 1 Social networking website, took a giant step forward by introducing new changes which allows people to share the information with everyone. The changes in privacy options drew Facebook in fresh controversy. Critics don’t like the new move of Facebook which allows outsiders to view personal information of the users. Facebook is one of the popular internet social networking website that has more than 375 million plus users, highest users in web world.
Privacy advocates raises concern over it and feels this new change are not so great from privacy perspective. They felt this new changes in privacy settings can open the doors to outsiders and exposes users’ private information which is not fair toward user’s privacy.
Marc Rotenberg, Executive Director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said his organization is checking Facebook’s new privacy changes and taking screenshots of it and found it inappropriate in respect to privacy than they may file a complaint to US Federal trade Commission.
Online rights organization Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) tagged Facebook's new privacy change "very bad".
Facebook taken this step in regards to much heated competition from rivals like Twitter, Linkedin, etc where information is shared in public. Another reason is that, major search engines like Google and Bing are moving themselves with the latest trend and started showing user-generated content from social media websites in the search results.
Facebook fired back on the criticism and said it will make life easier for user by giving the rights to share the information to the people of their choice.
From now on Facebook users got the ability to share their messages, videos, pictures and other personal information with everyone on the web, to view this people don’t have to become Facebook user or so. Facebook had done testing of public message feature within small group of users during last summer.
On Wednesday, Facebook introduced its new customized privacy settings option with introduction of simple personal privacy settings overview page ot the users. Facebook recommended user’s to select the option of sharing information to everyone or keep so much criticized "old settings".
Before the changes, Facebook users had the option to keep everything private with the gender and the city which raises more concern. In regards to that, Facebook spokesperson said users could leave city and gender blank to keep their information off the hands of non-friends.
Some of the lawyers supported Facebook that it will give the users ability to share information on the wider network. He also said that users can select the people whom they want to show a particular message whenever they write a new post which will restrict others to view that.
Facebook recommends the option of the information viewable by everybody because of the latest trend of information sharing. Recently, Microsoft and Google announced their plans to incorporate Facebook messages will be available on search results for everyone.
Facebook also said that by making names, home cities and profile pictures public – it will make people connect with friends and other online communities. Although it is not mandatory to provide such kind of information, they can leave the information blank in their profile. Facebook also said that they are keeping company's policies intact. They don't share user information with third party applications. They also said the process is very clear and giant step towards the future.
Most users liked the new changes and choose the new option to share information which will prove the Privacy advocates wrong, it has been quoted by Facebook. They also said now people can easily connected and share information available to much larger audience than before.
