Keeping an Eye on Facebook - Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Being on Facebook means different things to different people. Take Emily, a 37 year old mother of two middle school-age girls. Emily doesn’t need Facebook to keep up with adults her own age, but she is on Facebook for her daughters. Emily found herself having to explain to offended friends why she was ignoring their requests to be a “Facebook friend.” She’s too busy with her job and her family to spend any more time on Facebook than she has to.

She uses Facebook several times a week to keep on top of the socializing trends at her daughters’ school. She allows her girls to be on Facebook only if she is “friends” with them and if they give her their passwords. That way Emily can monitor what her daughters post, making sure they do not reveal too much personal information, get bullied online, or fall prey to predators posing as kids their age.

The naivete of children that age toward the perils of internet access sometimes works to Emily’s advantage. Because kids that age don’t care about their privacy settings, Emily is able to look at the Facebook pages of her daughters friends, and even friends of friends. Some of these kids, Emily has learned, use the time before their parents come home from work to raid dad’s wine cellar or try pot in the family rec room. They post pictures of their activities. Emily is well aware of who they are and will refuse to give her girls permission for any social activities at the homes of these children, or at events supervised by any of their parents. All too often she’s heard parents whine that they feel guilty “invading” their children’s privacy (like Emily has) on Facebook, so they simply cross their fingers and hope for the best.

Not so for Emily. She wants to teach her daughters that Facebook is not a place for kids to hide socializing that they know their parents wouldn’t approve of. She believes that the middle school years are the most vulnerable, and is making an extra effort now to guide her girls on a path to healthy relationships and self-esteem. Emily calls that “good parenting”.

--Deb Davidson, Associate, E.Sue Huff & Associates

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Privacy on Facebook - Monday, May 17, 2010

You're going to think it's pretty funny that, as the owner of a marketing and advertising company, I'm going to caution you about the kind of information you might be giving out about yourself over the internet. Advertisers are always looking for potential markets. Recently, writers for the New York Times, PC World, and other savvy publications are sounding a warning about Facebook's privacy policy. It seems that Facebook reset a lot of your account information to be accessible to all registered users, even if you had set up your Account Settings differently. For example, under the Account Settings option, in the Facebook Ad tabs, two options are automatically turned on to share some information with advertising networks and friends. Anyone who wants to keep this information private must uncheck the boxes in that tab.

Unless you were paying attention to this change, your profile, photos, wall posts, etc. suddenly became available to friends of friends. That status post about your vacation plans (your home will be unattended, right?) and complaints about your boss can now be seen by perfect strangers. Could be one of them is a friend of your boss's friend who just couldn't wait to share the juicy gossip. In FB slang, it's called "creeping"; in the real world it's called an invasion of privacy. An invasion that you are allowing.

Facebook has over 400 million registered users worldwide, which means it is the Mother Lode of Databases. It was originally meant to be a social networking site, just a friendly sort of place you could drop in and keep in touch with people easily. But 400 million potential targets for non-friendly uses are just too tempting for some folks. Identity thieves can easily glean some necessary information about you from your Facebook site, such as birthdate, city, address, e-mail address, and workplace. Keep Facebook friendly and protect yourself by visiting all your Account Settings and setting them to "Just Friends."

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