Facebook Privacy

• Posted by R Fox August 1, 2011 #facebook transtatic security privacy  3,271 views
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  I'm pretty cool with being 'outish' but I had a bit of a scare yesterday when I logged onto my 'Beckie' Facebook account and 3 people I know from work popped up as People I May Know - WTF! They didn't have any mutual friends? So how the hell did they get there?

  
  I did the google search on how they worked the People You May Know... not much came up… the expected via mutual Friends, profiles you have viewed before, importing address books - non of these applied. Very very spooky not to say intrusive!

  
  I took the quick steps to remove photos - set the privacy settings to the very strongest, but would they also have me in their People You May Know? Who knows. And breathe.

  
  The internet, and especially social networking is such an invasion of privacy, and the desire to generate revenue and make profits knows no bounds by Facebook and the others. And Google+ is coming (now in beta) - it has a current policy of only 'real names' at the moment. Will be no real privacy?

  
  Let's me make this very clear - with these big social networks it is all about money. Maybe at the start it was about being creative and geeky - but the more links, the more friends, the more they know about you, about us the more targeted the advertising is - the more they can charge.

  
  Twitter last week introduced promoted 'tweets' in the middle of your time-line. For those that don't use Twitter you get to see a stream of updates from the people you follow - and now Twitter are placing tweet ads - so it will look similar to one of your followers.
  The technology behind these social networks is immense - and yes it is free to use - but is it really free? 

  
  Transtastic in many ways is the same and we have to start covering the cost of the technology in the next few months and the plan is to do this via advertising. But have a niche audience (you and me) and we will never go invading your privacy to widen the network like the big social networks already do to build an empire and squeeze more revenue from it.

  
  Transtastic is your social network - and I always want you to feel safe and secure (and do excuse me for a while if I don't use Facebook)

   

   

  x Beckie