Forrester Blogs » Category: Facebook privacy policies

Welcome To The New Facebook: What Facebook's New Features Mean

Posted by Augie Ray on the Interactive Marketing Professionals Blog on October 6, 2010

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Augie Ray

Welcome to the new Facebook.  No, I don't mean Facebook the social network, although today's changes do represent some exciting new capabilities for Facebook users. Instead, I mean Facebook the company.  The organization that today announced new features seems a different Facebook than the one we’ve seen in the past.  Today’s Facebook is one committed to transparency and user control and mindful of its increasingly vital and high-profile position within people's communications and lives.

By now you may have heard of (or seen) the new features Facebook announced at its press event this morning. Here is a brief summary:

  • Download Your Info: You can download a copy of everything you’ve ever posted to Facebook. Go to “Account: Account Settings” in the upper right hand corner of your Facebook page to access this new feature. As an extra security measure, you will be asked to authenticate yourself before downloading your data as a ZIP file.  This file will contain your posts, pictures, list of friends, events, notes and more (see Figure 1).
     
  • Applications You Use: To date, once you allowed a third-party application to access your Facebook data, you had no ability to see what personal data was transferred and had few options to manage the application permissions.  Facebook is now offering greater transparency and control over this data sharing. Go to “Account: Privacy” in the upper right hand corner of your Facebook page, then click “edit settings” to review the applications you have authorized.  You can see the data each application has accessed; if you are unhappy with the amount of personal information provided, you may easily remove optional permissions for an application or deauthorize it completely from accessing your data (see Figure 2).
     
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Amazon Shows How To Protect Your Brand While Connecting To Facebook

Posted by Augie Ray on the Interactive Marketing Professionals Blog on July 30, 2010

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Augie Ray

As you probably know, Facebook and Amazon are allowing consumers to connect the two sites.  What I find most interesting is the care Amazon is taking to inform consumers what this will mean to them and why they should do it.  Given Facebook’s repeated stumbles on issues of consumer privacy, the approach being taken by Amazon is one every marketer should note and consider. What’s important about Amazon’s approach is that it's not simply leaving the communication of important information to Facebook. 

CNN, for example, lets Facebook do the talking. Below is Facebook’s standard "Request for Permission" page, which is the message consumers receive when they click the button to connect CNN with their Facebook profile.  What does it tell users?  CNN can "access my basic information," but what will they do with it?  Will they share or sell it further?  Will it be made available to marketers or other users?  Will my list of friends -- one of the items mentioned in the list of basic information that will be shared -- receive information from CNN as a result of my actions?  And what information will CNN send to Facebook -- every page I visit or only the ones I "like"?   

CNN Facebook Permission page

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Facebook, Privacy, And How It’s Affecting Facebook's (and Marketers’) Future

Posted by Augie Ray on the Interactive Marketing Professionals Blog on May 20, 2010

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Augie Ray
LONDON - FEBRUARY 03: (FILE PHOTO) In this ph...

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

It’s no secret that Facebook is facing a privacy backlash. . . again.  Headlines ask if Facebook is at a tipping point, and many people give Facebook low grades for the way it has handled user privacy.

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Are You Re-Thinking Facebook?

Posted by Chenxi Wang on the Security & Risk Professionals Blog on May 14, 2010

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Chenxi Wang

Facebook is currently the world's most popular social media site, with over 400 million users. Long-plagued by accusations of security leaks and lackluster privacy practices, the corporation is currently defending itself against a barrage of new criticism. CEO Mark Zuckerberg gave an interview earlier this year arguing that privacy is no longer a "social norm." Facebook privacy policies have been rapidly shifting to reflect this position.

The latest firestorm centers around a new feature called "instant personalization," a targeted advertising service that supplies personal user data to advertising partners like Pandora and Microsoft Docs. All Facebook accounts were included in this service when it was rolled out, and opting out is a convoluted, multi-step process. In a move that some users are calling deliberately deceptive, simply clicking an "opt out" check box does not protect your user data from being shared.

So far, the beta service is limited to three corporate partners — all of whom have promised not to behave inappropriately with the shared user data — but the feature is slated to be expanded over time. This puts millions of user accounts and their personal information at the mercy not just of Facebook, but of the ethics of every company that becomes an instant personalization partner in the future.

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