If your privacy is that important to you take the time to review your settings on a regular basis. This has been the “party line” from Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) for some time, but it appears the company no longer feels this is enough.
I’m not a huge proponent of Facebook, but the ball has been in your court for some time. Beginning today, and going on for a couple more, every user will receive a popup window that takes them through their privacy settings as they log on to the social media giant.
Just click the padlock
I’ve yet to see it myself today, so I thought perhaps I would logout and back in again. Nothing. That said on the right of the blue bar on top of the Facebook home page is a padlock icon and sure enough if you click it, the first item is the brand new “Privacy Checkup” featuring a dinosaur on a laptop.
From there it’s quite simple, only three choices and you’re done. First, you need only review (and change, if desired) the audience for your status updates, then it will give you options regarding Facebook-connected apps, lastly you can review and change everything else in your profile.
The day after Facebook crashed for 15 minutes, and it was largely written that its auto-play ads are killing your data allotment, perhaps today will be the day when people stop complaining about privacy violations but I highly doubt it.
This is a company that recently manipulated users NewsFeeds to run a psychological test on them.
Largest privacy move so far from Facebook
This is the largest move to date by Facebook to alleviate privacy concerns, though for now it’s only being rolled out on desktops which certainly limits the altruism given the amount of people who only log into Facebook on mobile, or at least a majority of the time.
“This is part of a whole line of work we’re doing to help people share with who they want,” said Paddy Underwood, product manager for privacy, in an interview. “We’ve tried to be more communicative about how these things actually work.”
With 1.3 billion users and growing privacy complaints are hardly going to go the way of the past.
