Webmaster

According to a Wall Street Journal article, Facebook, MySpace and other social media sites have been sending personal information, as well as information making their users identifiable, to advertisers. Advertisers are receiving IDs or usernames, which allow them to gather information the users of the social media sites have shared with the site.

The Journal article states that “Facebook went further than other sites”. Facebook has recently been on stage over their privacy policies, with good reason. With over 400 million users, according to a Facebook press page, the social media site has a tremendous web presence. When a user signs up for an account, the default privacy settings allow Facebook to share almost all information entered.

There are tools on the web that allow you to see just how much of your information is made available. I’ll talk you through using one. For those of you with a Facebook account, go to your profile. In the URL (in the address bar at the top of the page) you will find either your username, or your user ID (the user id will follow ‘id=’); make a note of the information. Whichever is there is what is sent to advertisers. Go to http://zesty.ca/facebook/ and enter your username or id, and hit ‘Go’. What you are returned is just the tip of what is made available to the world.

Over the next few posts, I plan to give some info on how to better control your privacy on Facebook. Be sure to check back and learn how to protect your, and your friends’ information.

Roger Creasy is Director of Interactive Operations for the Times-News. Roger can be e-mailed at rcreasy@thetimesnews.com. His personal web site is at RogerCreasy.com

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