The Great Facebook debate

[Saints1]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-10796584

This is a topic that has always interested me. My profile is on lock down from my spell as a teacher, but I have heard many stories of employers, or potential employers, rooting through facebook accounts to get extra data.

Are facebook responsible with your data? Is it something that bothers you? Would you like to see more regulation over it?

 

[Teh Mite]

That took me 6 seconds to find the download.

 

[Teh Mite]

Of course, you could just use http://www.facebook.com/family/

 

[SelimNiai]

It's not such a big issue to me, I have my privacy stuff set to Friends only so only people I have said "Yes I know that person" to can look at my data and no harm has come of it. The people who raise this hoo-ha about it are the ones who set it so everybody can see their details and even after a reminder from Facebook to re-check it and they still do ahev it so any random person can see their stuff then so be it.

 

[ORothlain]

Facebook allows you to be as careless with your information as you want. Truth be told, it's a new age and people have to realize that if someone really wants to dig up information on you, they can and will. I'm not advocating it, I'm just a realist who acknowledges the situation. My hope will be that any future employers would look at my facebook and say, "I'd love to party with that guy!" LOL!

 

[Haysie]

Apparently what is happening is that whenever Facebook change their layout, make a new feature, change the site in any way, the privacy settings are reset. What makes it worse it that they don't tell you when a change has been made so you can't change your privacy settings back unless you realise a change has been made.
So it proves then that Facebook is purely a money-making scheme!

 

[nickdnz]

Facebook's a pretty amazing and scary phenomina if you ask me. If anyone reads the terms and agreements, Facebook has the right to store all your data on their servers, and can delete at their discresion. That means every wall post, status update and worst of all, private chat you have on Facebook, is stored on their servers, even after your account is deleted. The information they get from that, can then be used for advertisments, so what ever you discusss the most will then be advertised to you via the ads on Facebook. It's a pretty scary thing.
That being said, I don't let this prevent me from using my Facebook, it's just a annoying side thought.

 

[Saints1]

I'd love to be able to afford to set up a no frills, no advertisement, no pricking about social networking site.

 

[User1245]

I think the problem comes in when people start making it any extension of their lives. The people who update their status's with personal / sensitive info are ones who are making themselves vulnerable to this kind of abuse. I've even seen people who have their street address and postbox number on there! WTF?! People feel obliged to put this kind of stuff on for some reason. Relationship status is under this category as well, totally irrelevant for a social networking website. Then when it says So-and-so isn't in a relationship anymore, everybody is like "what happened?", and then so-and-so is like "i don't want to talk about. Just leave it!". Hopeless.

 

[TRF_Ezequiel]

The biggest problem is indeed the personal info people put on it themselves. There's a website called www.lamebook.com which is a really good one if you are in for a good laugh. There's people actually posting a status saying they got an STD. What happens when you apply for a job and the employer checks your facebook just before hiring you... You wouldn't be the first one being denied a job because of Facebook.

 

[TRF_Cymro]

I was with facebook when it first started and seen it grow ... I don't use it much now only for chatting ... even that is crap!