10 New Privacy Settings Every Facebook User Should Know

Via:Allfacebook

Last week Facebook rolled out a new version of their privacy settings to all users. Privacy settings are something that many Facebook users are regularly confused about. With the new settings rolled out, we thought that now would be a great time to update the guide with the latest changes.
 
In this guide we present a thorough overview of the most important privacy settings which includes previous settings that are still relevant as well as new privacy settings that have been added by Facebook. The majority of the old privacy settings are still relevant, however there’s a chance that you may now be sharing much more information with the whole world. Make it through our new Facebook privacy guide and you’re guaranteed to be safe.

1. Understand Your Friend Lists

Facebook friend lists are the cornerstone of privacy on Facebook. While you don’t need to take advantage of friend lists, understanding this feature will instantly turn you into a “Facebook power user”. Understand that friend lists can take time to configure so don’t expect to breeze through this step. The concept behind friend lists is simple: it’s a way of organizing your friends into various affiliation groups. If you aren’t clear with our explanation, here’s how Facebook describes friend lists:

Friend Lists provide organized groupings of your friends on Facebook. For example, you can create a Friend List for your friends that meet for weekly book club meetings. You can filter your view of each list’s stream of activity separately on the home page. Friend Lists are easy to manage and allow you to send messages and invites to these groups of people all at once.

As I previously wrote, there are a few key things to understand about friend lists:

• You can add each friend to more than one Friend List
• Friend Lists should be used like “tags” as used elsewhere around the web
• Friend Lists can have specific privacy policies applied to them

The most common lists that many privacy experts will refer to are “Friends”, “Family”, and “Professional” however there’s a limitless combination of lists that you can create. Truthfully, it doesn’t matter how many friend lists you create, although I prefer to simplify things as much as possible. The key thing to understand is that your friends’ privacy settings will always default to the most restrictive friend list they’ve been placed in.

For example, let’s say your friend John is someone you met at work but continue to hang out with outside of work. You may have placed them in your “Work Contacts” Friend List and your “Local Friends” Friend List. If your “Work Contacts” cannot see photos you’ve been tagged in and your “Local Friends” can, John will not be able to see photos you’ve been tagged in.

You can configure your Friend Lists by visiting the friends area of your Facebook.

2. Remove Yourself From Facebook Search Results

My mom is a teacher and one of the first things she asked me when she joined Facebook is how she could make sure her students couldn’t see that she was on the site. Understandably my mom doesn’t want her middle school students to know what she’s up to in her personal life. There are numerous reasons that individuals don’t want their information to show up in search results on Facebook, and it’s simple to turn off your public visibility.

Within the new search privacy settings page, Facebook has made things extremely straight forward. There are now two settings: one for those people who can find you when searching on Facebook, and one for those searching within search engines (which the next section describes). In order to prevent others from finding you in Facebook’s search results, it’s two quick steps:

1. Visit your search privacy settings page.
2. Click on “Edit Settings” and enter your password.
3. Next to “Facebook Search Results” select the “Only Friends” privacy setting.

Strangely enough, Facebook doesn’t require you to click on “Save Changes” anymore, however these new settings should now be set.

3. Remove Yourself From Google

Facebook continues to receive A TON of traffic from displaying user profiles in search engines. Not all of your profile is displayed though. As was the case in our previous Facebook Privacy guide, the information displayed in the search profile is limited to: your profile picture, a list of your friends, and a list of up to approximately 20 Facebook Pages that you have become a fan of.

As many users have found out, your friend information is available in your public listings. To block that information from being publicly accessible you can remove yourself from Google’s index and other search engines. Some people enjoy having their information displayed in search engines, as it makes them easy to find. For those that prefer to err on the side of privacy though, it’s often a good idea to remove yourself from the search engines.

To remove yourself from the search engines, visit the search privacy settings page and simply uncheck the box next to “Public Search Results” which says “Allow Indexing”. You’ll need to wait for Google and other search engines to remove your information from their cache, so don’t be surprised if you still show up in the search engines for a few weeks.

4. Avoid The Infamous Photo Tag Mistake

Many users are getting smarter about their privacy settings, however I continue to hear horror stories of users who have their relationships damaged as a result of photos they’ve been tagged in. More than just having their relationships damaged, some users get fired as a result of photos they’ve been tagged in. There are a number of ways to work around this problem. One of the ways is described later in this guide, however there is an extremely easy way to avoid having compromising photos show up to friends.

Head over to the profile privacy settings page and go to the section which says “Photos and Videos of Me”. Then click on the drop down selector, and click on the “Custom” option. You can then select “Only Me” as displayed in the image below. Keep in mind that this will block all people from seeing any images or videos that you’ve been tagged in. Many users want their friends to see photos they’ve been tagged in though.

So how do you work around this issue without putting your job or relationships at risk? The best way is to take advantage of the friend lists that you previously created (in the first setting) and limit specific people from seeing the images and videos you’ve been tagged in. For example, it’s probably not the best idea to have your professional contacts see the images you’ve been tagged in. If you have a professional list, you can simply enter that friend list under “Hide this from” in the custom privacy dialog box which is shown below.

5. Protect Your Albums

One of the greatest risks on Facebook is that you get tagged in a compromising photo. However it’s important to consider who you really want to have viewing your photo albums. Given Facebook’s custom privacy settings you are able to get as granular as you’d like with the visibility of each album. Thanks to the new publisher privacy settings, you can even get granular with every photo that you post if you really want to have complete control.

What privacy settings you choose for your albums is completely up to you, but if you do want to limit access to your albums, I recommend visiting the photos privacy settings page and limiting the access of each of your albums to “Only Friends” at the least. Unless you are a professional photographer, there probably isn’t much of a reason for making your albums visible so that the whole world can see them.

6. Avoid The Post-Breakup Facebook Effect

 

Strangely enough, there is a new mating ritual which has evolved on Facebook and often relationship status changes are part of that process. Often times after a female changes her relationship status to “Single”, a whole slew of new “potential suitors” start commenting on the relationship status change and write posts on her wall. Honestly, I see nothing wrong with this process and find it quite entertaining, however it probably is something that you don’t want all of your contacts to know about, especially your professional contacts.

While I’ve chosen to avoid relationship statuses altogether, some users still want to have them displayed. While many people like to let the world know that they are in a relationship, you can avoid having a relationship status change becoming the talk of the town. While Facebook has now removed the feature which lets users control which actions generate news feed stories, you can still protect the visibility of your relationship status.

Simply go to your profile privacy settings page and change the “Family and Relationship” setting to “Only Me”. While it would be great to make that information public, it’s currently impossible to control whether or not a relationship status change creates a news feed story. As such, I believe it’s better to play things safe and block users from seeing your relationship status.

7. Control What Information Applications Can Access

The risk of having applications publish stories without your approval, which we covered in the last Facebook privacy guide, is being eliminated completely. However it’s important to understand what information applications can access. As Facebook writes, when you visit applications, they “may access any information you have made visible to Everyone as well as your publicly available information.” Publicly available information “includes your Name, Profile Picture, Gender, Current City, Networks, Friend List, and Pages.”

The more restrictive you make your profile settings, the less information that’s available to applications. While applications must follow your existing privacy settings, your friends can also share information about you within applications. An example would be a greeting card application which uses your birthday to prompt your friend to send a card. Facebook allows users to control the types of information that applications can access when your friends use an application that you have not previously installed.

You can control that information (as pictured to the right) by visiting this page.

8. Make Contact Information Private

I personally use Facebook for professional and personal use and it can frequently become overwhelming. That’s why I’ve taken the time to outline these ten privacy protection steps. Once I began approving friend requests from people that I hadn’t built strong relationships with, I immediately limited the visibility of my contact information so that only close friends could view things like my email and phone number.

If you post any of your personally identifiable information (phone number, email, or address) on your profile, it makes sense to limit who can see it. There are two ways to limit who can see your contact information. The first is to visit the contact privacy settings page. From there you can customize the contact settings as much as you’d like. As I previously wrote, for each contact item that you have in your profile, you should set custom privacy settings so that contacts who you aren’t close to don’t have access to your email and phone number.

The second way to customize your contact privacy settings is directly from your profile. Click on the “Info” tab in your profile and scroll down to the contact information section. Once you mouse over the contact area, you’ll have the option of editing the content. If you click on “Edit” you will notice little lock icons next to each piece of information (as pictured below). If you click on the lock you will be prompted with a box which says “Who can see this?” from which you can completely customize who your information is visible to.

9. Avoid Embarrassing Wall Posts

While you may have enjoyed getting wasted with your friends at the holiday party last night, it’s probably not something that you want everybody to know about. Your friends may not use Facebook for connecting with professional contacts, and as a result they don’t think twice about casually posting something that should be kept more private. As such, it makes sense to control what’s visible to others. There are two places where you can configure your wall privacy settings: directly from your profile page and from the profile privacy page.

In order to edit the privacy settings from your profile page, click on the “Options” link directly under the publisher. The image below shows how to control your settings in three easy steps. The most dramatic modification that you can make is unchecking the box which says “Friends may post to my wall”. Most users want to be able to communicate via the wall so disabling this functionality will prevent anyone from communicating publicly with you.

If you don’t want to take the most extreme step by blocking users from writing on your wall, you can customize who can view wall posts made by your friends by clicking on the drop down directly next to “Who can see posts made by my friends?” I recommend preventing all professional contacts from being able to view posts made by your friends.

10. Keep Friendships Private

Yes, I understand that you want the whole world to know that you are popular and have lots of friends! However, not all users want everybody knowing who their friends are and there are clear justifications for blocking others from seeing your Facebook friends. I’ve had a number of individuals visit my profile and then selectively pick off friends that are relevant to them for marketing purposes, or other reasons.

Voyeurism is a key component of Facebook and one of the most frequent activities of users is to browse through other users’ friends. Whatever the reason is, just know that users are doing it. While your friendships can show up in search engines, we’ve already highlighted how to make your profile invisible to search engines in number 3 above. If you want to take things one step further and prevent others from viewing your friends, you can follow these steps:

1. Go to your profile page
2. Click on the pencil icon in the top right corner of your “Friends” box
3. Uncheck the box which says “Show my friends on my profile”

Now you’ve successfully hidden others from viewing your friends. Keep in mind that your friends list is accessible to any Facebook applications you use. It’s also possible for users to view your friends list if they have access to your username (Mark Zuckerberg’s friends list for example). My guess is that Facebook will eventually provide functionality to block users from seeing your friends completely.

Understand The New Privacy Settings

The New Publisher Settings

Yes, last night’s holiday party was a lot of fun but when you post on your friends walls (or your own) you can limit the visibility to just your friends. Configuring your privacy settings effectively is important, but even more important is the ability to use Facebook’s features in a way which avoids any negative repercussions. One of the most important features to roll out with the new privacy settings is the ability to publish content which is only visible to specific friends.

Rather than posting a status update that everybody can view, limit those friends who can access your information. The new content visibility settings are as follows: Everyone, Friends and Networks, Friends of Friends, Only Friends, and Customize. Understanding the new publisher settings is key to protecting your privacy on Facebook.

Note that the image below doesn’t include “Friends and Networks” as not all users have this option. You must be a member of a university or professional network in order to see the “Friends and Networks” setting.

Everyone Literally Means Everyone In The World

Yes, when you select “Everyone” on content that you publish, anybody on the internet will be able to view that content. When Facebook released the new privacy transition tool, the purpose was to get you to share more information with Facebook users, primarily the status updates and links that you are posting. If you are like most users, then you probably just accepted Facebook’s recommendations without thinking about it (if you didn’t accept, congratulations as you clearly understand Facebook privacy). The result of blindly going through the new privacy transition tool is that your status updates and other information is now publicly accessible by everyone on the internet.

If you don’t mind having your content published to everyone in the world by default, then you don’t need to worry about changing anything. I have a feeling that most users don’t prefer to have all their information publicly shared by default however. Instead, users want complete control over their privacy and they want to start their Facebook experience in a protected environment. While it’s possible to debate Facebook’s privacy philosophy, reading through this guide should help ensure that you continue to feel protected while using Facebook.

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Update
We’ve also included a video below to help you understand Facebook’s new privacy settings.

Suze Orman Advises Mark Zuckerberg Against Buying Twitter

Twitter may be valued at $1.4 billion, but it’s definitely not a smart buy in Suze Orman’s opinion. Well, that is if you’re Mark Z., a 25-year-old degreeless professional with $300 million in liquid assets, $4 billion in Facebook stock, $2,500 in monthly expenses and no debt.

In her latest “Can I Afford It” segment, Orman strongly advises Mark Z. — an obvious reference to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg — against buying Twitter. She exclaims, “You want to spend $1.5 billion on Twitter, do I have that right? … Why do you need to buy it … you know Twitter, you can get it for free.”

Of course, the video is all in jest and first aired at last night’s Shorty Awards in New York. Orman, who happened to be nominated for a Shorty Award in the finance category, agreed to film the spoof video when approached by producers. The end result is a slice of comedic genius at the expense of Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare and even Chatroulette.

Check out the clever and entertaining mock segment below:

In U.K., Prisoners Use Facebook to Harass Their Victims

Most of Facebook's 400 million members use the social-networking site to reconnect with long-lost pals and keep in touch with friends and family. But dozens of prisoners in Britain have found a more sinister and predatory use for Facebook: after being locked up for offenses such as murder and assault, inmates are taunting and terrorizing their victims through status updates and group wall posts.

Barry Mizen, whose 16-year-old son Jimmy was murdered in 2008, says his family endured months of personal attacks on a Facebook page that was created after Jimmy's killer, Jake Fahri, was convicted and sentenced to life in prison last March. "The words going back and forth were getting really nasty — it was just so undignified," says Mizen, who lives in southeast England. "My children were taking it very personally." Around the same time, taunting messages also started to come from Fahri's Twitter account, including one that said, "Jimmy Mizen was a pathetic loser." "There's got to be more control over this," Barry Mizen says. "Facebook and Twitter have to take responsibility for what goes on their sites." 

British prisons ban inmates from accessing the Internet except for educational purposes, and then only under staff supervision. But prisoners are still finding ways to update their Facebook pages from behind bars, sometimes using smart phones they've smuggled into jail. More than 3,800 illicit cell phones were seized in British prisons in 2008, prompting authorities to start using mobile-phone signal blockers and body-orifice security scanners in some jails. Nevertheless, officials admit there's not much they can do to stop prisoners from having friends or family update their Facebook pages for them.  

Facebook officials in the U.S. and Europe say they don't know whether this harassment problem extends beyond Britain, the only place where such cases have been made public. "We believe this is really a case of first impression," says Tim Sparapani, Facebook's director of public policy in Washington. "We've searched far and wide within the company and, among the collective memories of staff, we think this has no precedent."

In an effort to solve the problem, British Justice Secretary Jack Straw recently called on Facebook to shut down the profile pages of more than 30 prisoners who were known to have used the site to target their victims. "The abuse of social-networking sites by prisoners is offensive to public morality and decency," he said. "Updating their profiles within prison is an offense under prison rules, and using them to abuse victims is deplorable." Facebook obliged with the request to remove the pages on Feb. 11, and company officials met with representatives from the Justice Ministry and victims' advocates this week to formulate more concrete guidelines for reporting abuse. Straw said officials would discuss extending the Facebook restrictions to released prisoners as well.

The sheer number of people using social-networking sites makes it difficult to monitor misuse, both for law-enforcement officials and site administrators. Sparapani estimates that Facebook users spend 18 billion minutes on the site each day. "We have 400 million active users and a tiny, tiny staff. We need to find novel ways to handle that kind of crushing amount of activity. It's the burden of being so immensely popular," he says. Richard Allan, the Dublin-based director of policy for Facebook Europe, says an open dialogue between social-networking sites and police is key to stopping abuse. "The Ministry of Justice brought to our attention people who have been abusing the site," he says. "We want to have a regular channel of communication so we can deal with these cases."

But for some, punishing abusers after they torment victims isn't enough. Gary Trowsdale, founder of a group called Families Utd, a British advocacy group for relatives of young murder victims, says people should automatically lose their cyberliberties in addition to their civil liberties if they're found guilty of a crime. Although Facebook bans sex offenders from using the site, it has no specific policy for people convicted of other crimes. "Until they serve their time, they should lose the ability to have their profile on any of these social-networking sites," Trowsdale says. "Their information should be given to Facebook and Twitter by the relevant justice authorities, and on that basis [the sites] should then self-police."

For the time being, Facebook will continue to rely on its system of user-based abuse reporting, although Sparapani says the company is fully prepared to cooperate with law-enforcement officials when specific harassment cases come up. "We let users police the site, then we take action based on their reports and we review the reports," he says. "We triage based on the seriousness of the incident."

That is little consolation to Mizen, who is still waiting for Facebook to take down the page he reported as offensive months ago. Allan wouldn't comment specifically on Mizen's case but said that in general, all complaints are reviewed within 36 hours. Not in his case, Mizen says. "You don't get any acknowledgement," he says. "Nothing happens."

 

Google's Gmail to try to challenge Facebook

The search giant is upgrading its Gmail program to add social-media tools similar to those found on Facebook. Google will incorporate photo and video sharing within the Gmail application, along with a new tool for status updates. Google will hold a press conference at its Mountain View, Calif., headquarters today to show off the new features.

Google is still far and away the No. 1 most-visited website, with 173 million U.S. visitors in December, according to measurement service ComScore Media Metrix, up 16% from the previous December. But Facebook is close behind.

Facebook was the fourth-most-visited site in December, with 111.8 million visitors, up 105% from the prior year.

"If Google can get you to do more things in Gmail, they can sell more ads, because you've spent more time there," says Danny Sullivan, editor of the Search Engine Land blog.

That Google would feel the heat from Facebook makes sense. Many former Google executives now work at Facebook, including Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, who at Google helped build the lucrative AdWords pay-per-click ad program. Facebook has a similar pay-per-click program now.

Facebook invites members to share photos, videos and status updates on their personalized home pages. Advertisers reach out there with ads that are targeted by age, gender, location and more.

Wedding photographers, for instance, can reach out to women in a specific ZIP code who are engaged to be married.

"Initially, Google misunderstood social media and its significance," says Greg Sterling, an analyst at Sterling Market Intelligence. "They've got the religion now and have been trying ever since to add more social utility. Social is how the Web has evolved."

Yet he thinks that bringing social tools to Gmail doesn't make sense. "Gmail is a good product as it is. I'm not sure these tools add anything except to make it more bloated."

Google recently added a new social search feature that can in part show you "results from people in your social circle."

In order to participate, Google users first must fill out profile information, similar to Facebook, which lists interests, contacts and friends. Sullivan says few have participated because, unlike Facebook, it's not mandatory.

In the end, no matter how big Facebook eventually becomes, Sterling says it will "never take away" Google's core business: search.

 

"It could shave off a little search volume and might take some ads away from Google, but the end result will be small," he says.

Facebook Founder on Privacy: Public is the New “Social Norm”

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg claims that if Facebook was starting out now, sharing with everybody would be the starting point, rather than with a small group of friends. Is this more about reflecting social norms or changing them to help Facebook compete with Twitter?

The statement, made during a livestream of the Crunchies awards, hits on a hot button issue for Facebook: it recently notified users of privacy changes via a pop-up notification. While the message claimed that Facebook was displaying the message to give users more privacy controls, blindly clicking “next” was a way to make much of your data public. And in fact, some data like the Friends List has become more public without any settings changes by users.

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Zuckerberg: Sharing is the “Social Norm”

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Zuckerberg’s statement to interviewer Michael Arrington avoids any major “gotcha” quotes, subtly implying that Facebook’s move is a reaction to societal changes but carefully avoiding any mention of Twitter’s  role in those changes. The full quote, picked up in a very well-written post by Marshall Kirkpatrick this weekend, emphasizes “social norms” and “evolution”:

When I got started in my dorm room at Harvard, the question a lot of people asked was ‘why would I want to put any information on the Internet at all? Why would I want to have a website?’

And then in the last 5 or 6 years, blogging has taken off in a huge way and all these different services that have people sharing all this information. People have really gotten comfortable not only sharing more information and different kinds, but more openly and with more people. That social norm is just something that has evolved over time.

We view it as our role in the system to constantly be innovating and be updating what our system is to reflect what the current social norms are.

A lot of companies would be trapped by the conventions and their legacies of what they’ve built, doing a privacy change – doing a privacy change for 350 million users is not the kind of thing that a lot of companies would do. But we viewed that as a really important thing, to always keep a beginner’s mind and what would we do if we were starting the company now and we decided that these would be the social norms now and we just went for it.

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Change was Inevitable

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Critics of Facebook’s move will probably find support: Facebook’s user base is notoriously resistive to change, and yet nearly every major change, with the exception of the failed Beacon project, has seen a huge surge in popularity for the company. Facebook users were certainly opposed to its expansion beyond colleges, but it’s hard to argue that the service has become less useful as a result.

So now Facebook is becoming a catalyst of social change, a transition that’s likely to be somewhat painful for all of us. Twitter dramatically lowered the barriers to content creation, and thus sharing our day-to-day lives became effortless. But it was Facebook that took the trend mainstream, affecting 300 million+ people worldwide.

My take: Zuck is right, the change was inevitable. If Facebook hadn’t pushed this forward, Google would have inevitably made our lives more public in its quest to make all the world’s information accessible (yes, that includes information about individuals). And if not Google, then Twitter … the trend started there and Twitter’s growth would have gradually defined the standard in sharing.

Public sharing as the default was unavoidable, but Facebook has pushed the trend forward faster than any of us might have expected. It’s a concept that will take some getting used to.

via:mashable

Facebook? Social networker could ignite IPO market in 2010

The pipeline of initial public offerings for 2010 looks promising as private equity firms look to cash in on their investments after coming back to the nearly defunct market in the fall.

Online networking companies may take center stage. So far, the company generating the most buzz hasn't even filed for an IPO: social networking site Facebook, which has many betting its creation of a dual-class stock structure in November is a precursor to going public.

IPO market trackers say other popular online networking companies could soon offer shares to the public. Micro-blogging site Twitter and business networking site LinkedIn will likely follow if Facebook is well received. Restaurant review site Yelp and Internet telephone service Skype, which was sold by eBay to a group of private investors in November, could also join the line.

"Once Facebook makes that move, it will literally be pandemonium," said Scott Sweet, senior managing partner at IPO research firm IPO Boutique. "It will clear the way for everyone else."

As recently as six months ago, there was little excitement in the IPO market after it dried up as the economy worsened. But a flurry of debuts came in the second half of 2009 as confidence in stock markets grew.

In the last year, companies raised about $100 billion globally, and $22 billion in the U.S., through initial public offerings of common stock. The amount raised in the U.S. is about equal to the 2008 total, but that year, the majority of the money came from the $18 billion offering of credit card processor Visa. Both years combined still don't add up to the $59.7 billion collected in 2007.

In addition to the activity expected in the online networking universe, analysts predict that next year will bring a surge in filings as the economy strengthens and private equity firms invested in various companies continue to look for a profitable exit from their investments through an IPO or sale. There are already 95 companies in the IPO pipeline so far, compared with 63 public offerings this year. That's still less than a quarter of the 272 that went public in 2007.

"There's quite an appetite right now for profitable companies, and there are enough coming up that are interesting and have positive cash flow and top-line revenue growth," said Francis Gaskins of IPOdesktop.com. "The window is wide open for what I expect is a backlog of private equity deals that want to get out."

Technology companies planning IPOs are getting the most attention, including Calix Networks, which provides communications systems and software; semiconductor company Telegent Systems; Newegg.com, an online-only retailer that sells computer hardware, software and consumer electronics; and online marketing company QuinStreet.

"There are many well-founded, impressive names out there," Sweet said. "Especially considering how active the past few months have been with the best performances coming from technology companies, I do believe venture capital firms will make a grand entrance back to the market on their credibility."

Also driving the IPO market are deals from Asia, which is enjoying stronger economy and a resurgence in investment. Companies there have clean balance sheets and earnings that are stronger than many debt-heavy U.S. firms. Offerings on exchanges in Hong Kong and mainland China have raised about twice as much as U.S. IPOs in 2009.

In the U.S., the top three performers in 2009 were out of China: water-treatment equipment maker Duoyuan Global Water, online gaming company Changyou.com and Lihua International, which makes magnet wire and fine copper for use in electronics. All have at least doubled from their offering price.

Specialty chemicals maker Chemspec International and clinical stage biotechnology company Omeros earned the dubious distinction of biggest losers among 2009 IPOs, each having fallen about 27% from their offering price. Chemspec, which went public in June, lowered its fiscal 2009 outlook due to low global demand. Omeros fell as it received no Food and Drug Administration approvals.

Among the biggest disappointments of 2009 was Rosetta Stone, which debuted in April rising nearly 40% on its first trading day. The seller of language learning software canceled a secondary public stock offering in August, and in November said its U.S. consumer business was showing signs of weakness. The stock is down about 4% from its offering price.

How well a company did this year seemed to mostly depend on timing and profitability, Gaskins said. Looking forward, there aren't any oil and gas companies in a position to list, he said, though there may be a few spinoffs of those that have already gone public. Meanwhile, the solar sector isn't expected to shine in the IPO market next year as supply exceeds demand.

#LG is getting teens to think before they #text

 

How to fix #Facebook's new privacy settings

 

When logging in to Facebook Thursday, I, like millions of other people, got the directive to update my privacy settings to fit in to the new, "simplified," scheme.

But at their core, the Facebook privacy settings have not been simplified. Beyond the set-up page, Facebook's privacy controls are now more complex and more powerful. The new set-up page seems more designed to pry this privacy from you than give you access to the new, and excellent, controls that Facebook has put in place.

What gets me about the page is that it doesn't seem to be designed for the users of the service. I get the impression it's set up to get users to give Facebook more permission than they should, to put their private data in the public sphere.

It does this by organizing around its "recommended" privacy settings rather than by your previous settings, and by not giving you access to the fine-grained control that's under the hood.

If you accept the tacit recommendations on the page, items that you likely used to keep restricted to just people in your network or to your extended network will be visible to everyone on the Web. Data that will be exposed includes your wall posts and photos. That's what Facebook recommends, and apparently wants. Likewise, your political and religious views, per Facebook recommendation, will now be shared with your entire extended network, which, if you're reasonably connected in the world, will easily include people with whom you'd rather not share this information.

I understand why Facebook is attempting to expand the permissions it collects from users to share their information. The more information that is open, the more interesting Facebook is to people trying to get in to the system or to expand their own networks. And the more people use Facebook to define their social circles, the more potentially monetizable data Facebook has, and the more valuable and competitive its database is, compared to other social systems.

Moreover, the more public Facebook users' updates are, the better Facebook can fend off Twitter, which has a social system that is by default open. On Twitter, unless users specify otherwise, anyone can follow them, and all updates are public. Facebook's social graph has been historically closed: Friending has to be mutual, and updates, so far, have been limited to just friends.

With the new defaults, Facebook becomes more searchable, more Twitter-like, and gets more traffic from search engines.

In return for asking for this openness, though, Facebook is giving users something new and valuable: The capability to control who can see each individual post with incredible specificity. I especially like the feature that lets a user put up a post that's open to their entire network (friends of friends) except for a specific person or people. It's a great feature for gossips, or for someone who wants to communicate with everyone they know--except their mother.

But I'd like to propose to Facebook that it re-work its new initial privacy page with one designed to help users, not Facebook's Google rankings. Here it is:

By default, this maintains your current settings. It also gives you relevant, if simplified, options for each of the main content types. And, finally, it's not subtle about alerting you that "everyone," in Facebook parlance, means everyone on the whole Web.

Meanwhile, here's how to exercise full control over your Facebook privacy settings. First, blast past the new simple settings page. It doesn't matter what you put on it. Then go straight to the top menu, and under the Settings drop-down pick "Privacy Settings." From that screen you can select several privacy-related categories. The most important is the "Profile Information" page, which gives you very precise, fine-grained control over who can see what. This is the privacy screen you should spend time thinking about and working on. Skip the over-broad and poorly-designed new set-up screen that Facebook is now forcing on its users.

Are #Facebook Users Too Friendly For Their Own Good?

The latest research conducted by IT security firm Sophos shows that it’s very easy to convince Facebook users to reveal their personal info to complete strangers.

This is nothing new, mind you — after all, many users see Facebook as a possibility to make new friends — but it is worth noting that simply friending someone you know nothing about can result in identity theft.

Here’s how Sophos conducted their research:

 

“Sophos created two fictitious users with names based on anagrams of the words ‘false identity’ and ’stolen identity.’ 21-year-old ‘Daisy Felettin’ was represented by a picture of a toy rubber duck bought at a $2 shop; 56-year-old ‘Dinette Stonily’ posted a profile picture of two cats lying on a rug. Each sent out 100 friend requests to randomly-chosen Facebook users in their age-group.

Within two weeks, a total of 95 strangers chose to become friends with Daisy or Dinette — an even higher response rate then when Sophos first performed the experiment two years ago with a plastic frog. Worse still, in the latest study, eight Facebookers befriended Dinette without even being asked.”

At Sophos, they call it the “rubber duck attack.” The moniker is silly on purpose, as it shows how you can gather someone’s personal info without any technical expertise, simply by working within the social network’s rules.

It’s important to point out that Facebook gives very extensive privacy options for every profile; you can read the details on how to protect your data in our Facebook privacy primer. While there’s nothing wrong with being friendly, even with strangers, Facebook users need to understand that this friendliness can cost them, and the price of identity theft can be very high.

Check out a video showing how the “rubber duck” tactic can be used for identity theft below.

#Facebook paves way for IPO

Facebook has followed Google's lead and introduced a dual-class stock structure, the clearest sign yet that the world's most popular social networking site is preparing for an eventual public offering.

In doing so, Mark Zuckerberg, the company's 25-year-old chief executive, looks to be solidifying his long-term grip on the site he founded five years ago that has become the fourth most popular destination on the web.

Dual-class stock structures are controversial because they give certain shareholders much stronger voting rights than others.

"Dual-class stock is an anathema to institutional investors," said Charles Elson, professor of corporate governance at the University of Delaware. "Ultimately, shareholders lose. If something were to go wrong, there's absolutely nothing they can do about it."

The use of separate classes of shares to protect the voting control of a narrow group of investors has traditionally been used in the US only in the media business. Public investors in companies such as the New York Times, Comcast and Hollinger have not been able to exert the control they would normally have, Mr Elson said.

Google adopted the practice when it went public in 2004, granting class-B shares to co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and chief executive Eric Schmidt.

Google's class-B shares held 10 times the voting rights as its class-A shares, an arrangement mimicked by Facebook.

At the time, Mr Page warned that share structure would leave control of the company substantially with him and Mr Brin, though he added that that was necessary to fulfil the company's long-term vision.

With Tuesday's move, Mr Zuckerberg appears to be emulating this strategy.

Facebook confirmed the plan in a statement, saying that "existing shareholders wanted to maintain control over voting on certain issues to help ensure the company can continue to focus on the long-term to build a great business".

Mr Zuckerberg has said that he plans to take the company public eventually. But on Tuesday Facebook said an IPO was not imminent.

Facebook will convert all current shareholders to class-B stock, according to the Wall Street Journal, which first reported the plan.

Shares that carry higher voting rights usually lose that privilege when they change hands, leaving control with an even more concentrated group of investors over the long term.