Thursday, April 21, 2011

Facebook pushes the envelope yet again

Just after lunch I went to the Huffington Post while surfing and was greeted by a popover that informed me that a Facebook friend (one of the owners of a yellow dog which pines over the other owner’s tennis shoe when he is gone) had linked her facebook account to HuffPo and invited me to do the same.

I thought I had blocked all access to my Facebook page other than to friends.  Not so grasshopper.  If your friends like a page or a website or an app, they get access to you now.

If you click through to “Account Settings” and then click this line:

“Info accessible through your friends
Control what information is available to apps and websites when your friends use them”

you will get this below.  When I did, all of the items were checked:

Use the settings below to control which of your information is available to applications, games and websites when your friends use them. The more info you share, the more social the experience.

Bio
My videos
Birthday
My links
Family and relationships
My notes
Interested in
Photos and videos I'm  tagged in
Religious and political views
Hometown
My website
  
Current city
If I'm online
Education and work
My status updates
Activities, interests, things I like
My photos
Places I check in to

Your name, profile picture, gender, networks and user ID (along with any other information you've set to everyone) is available to friends' applications unless you turn off platform applications and websites.

I don’t remember seeing that screen before; and, even if I had, I damn well know I didn’t check the boxes.  The only thing I can think of that I’ve done is give Photoshop permission to upload pictures recently.  Maybe that reset everything.  Sorry Photoshop and HuffPo, you are now on the shit list.  And Facebook, it may be true that “[t]he more info you share, the more social the experience:” but, I like designing my own social circumstances and I’m getting real tired of you forcing me to catch you each time you decide to change the rules.

2 comments:

The Curmudgeon said...

No, it wasn't HuffPost; it was Facebook itself. When it rearranges things it just defaults you to the most transparent settings possible. After reading your post I checked my Facebook and found the exact same thing.

Dave said...

The bad thing is that though I've now shut down the breach, the info (the very little that Facebook has about the real me) is out there; and, if I understand it correctly, FB sent all the info about my FB friends to HuffPost. And you know damned well they aren't going to erase it. Think of some nasty adjectives to put in front of the noun Facebook, I'm thinking most of them.