Monday, August 31, 2009

Users Control Facebook Now On

I have always been a believer that social networking sites like Facebook always play with our personal data. I had already written a post about the Friend Finder feature of Facebook and the chances of it scanning through your private data. These were just assumptions and we did not have any materialistic evidence for or against it. But Last month Facebook was found to breach Canadian law by holding on to users' personal data indefinitely. Facebook has now agreed to make changes to the way it handles this information and be more transparent about what data it collects and why. It will also make it clear that users can deactivate or delete their account.

These changes mean that the privacy of approximately 200 million users will be far better protected. Facebook has said it will make changes that will give users more control over the data they provide to third-party developers of applications, such as games and quizzes. There are around 950,000 developers in 180 countries who provide applications for the site. Specifically, the changes will require applications to state which information they wish to access and obtain consent from the user before it is used or shared.

All this emphasises the fact that the Facebook developers had unrestricted access to our personal data. Though after this change in the Privacy Policy things may get a bit more user friendly. Now the user will have more control over his private data and he can decide when and where he wants to share his personal data. Facebook and Twitter are also the two sites that have sparked a new revolution mobile net usage. These are very popular sites and have millions of users world wide. We have had a news doings the rounds some days back regarding the hacking of Twitter and Facebook. So these sites have been in the eye of hackers.

This change in privacy policy will definitely make us feel more confident and will help us trust the sites. The most important part is that the magical button shall now be in our hands and we can use it as per our needs. Now if we feel like exposing our private data, nobody stops us but if we decide against it, we can be sure that the data is as private as it was. There is no one accessing our personal information without our permission or without our even knowing about it.

No comments:

Post a Comment