Facebook Security Settings

Privacy safeguard at Facebook

 One of the more popular social networking Web site is Facebook. This quickly growing service differentiates itself from other online networks by having widespread privacy controls. Facebook enables users to choose their own privacy settings and choose who can see specific parts of their profile. Facebook requires a user’s name and profile picture (if applicable) to be accessible by everyone.

· The processes to be the registered user of Facebook.com:

a.       First, create an account by inserting full name, e-mail, password, birthday and gender.

b.      Click on the “create an account button”

c.       Once you have successfully created an account, you’ll be automatically signed in.

d.      Then you will be directed to another page, “Find Friends”. This can be done by linking the Facebook account with our phone, e-mail contacts or on Facebook itself.

· The functions available at Facebook.com to protect users’ privacy:

 One of the function available at Facebook.com to protect users privacy is privacy button. Facebook provide its user with privacy button on each post which let users to change the post’s privacy. This button consist option like sharing option such as public, friends of friends, custom (limited user) and only me. Public option allow users post to be viewed by Facebook users around the world, while friends of friends means only user and their friend only can see the post without other users knows. Besides, custom option let users to choose only certain friends can see the posts and option of only me allow only users can see their own post without user around the world know it.   

· The problems faced by users with respect to their privacy control implemented at of Facebook.com:

a. Privacy setting (2009) - Facebook changed their privacy settings so that sharing information with everyone became the default setting and removed the news feed privacy controls put in place after their "big mistake" in 2006

b. More privacy problems (2010) - A glitch in February 2010 caused some private messages on Facebook to be sent to unintended recipients and that May a coding error opened Facebook chats, which are supposed to be private, to others.

c. A few weeks later, the Wall Street Journal revealed that Facebook and other social networking websites "have been sending data to advertising companies that could be used to find consumers' names and other personal details, despite promises they don't share such information without consent". Zuckerberg soon responded on the Facebook blog, announcing that they would make it easier to control privacy settings and give users more say over what information is made public.

· How do you rate the privacy control implemented at Facebook.com with the other popular social networking web site?

We would rate the privacy control at facebook.com three out of five. This is because the level of privacy on Facebook is more versatile compare to other social media such as Instagram and twitter which both site only have public or private setting. Unlike facebook.com it give more privacy option like public, friends of friends, custom (limited user) and only me.

How To - Master your Facebook privacy settings (CNET)