Posts Tagged ‘privacy settings’

Facebook Now Has 750 Million Users

Published by pratyushkp on June 24th, 2011 - in Social, Technology

Image via Wikipedia

Facebook’s incredible worldwide growth has reached another major milestone: the service now has 750 million monthly active users, according to a source close to the company.

Techcrunch reached out to Facebook for confirmation, and a company spokesperson responded that they don’t have anything to announce at this time. That isn’t surprising: the company hasn’t officially released an updated user count since it reached 500 million users nearly a year ago. Facebook has obviously been growing since then — we believe the company may be waiting until it hits the 1 billion mark before officially updating the stat again.

Facebook changes privacy settings for millions of users – facial recognition is enabled

Published by pratyushkp on June 8th, 2011 - in Social, Technology

Image via CrunchBase

When Facebook revealed last year it was introducing facial recognition technology to help users tag their friends in photographs, they gave the functionality to North American users only.

Most of the rest of us found the option in our privacy settings was “not yet available”, which meant we could neither enable or disable it. We simply had to wait until Facebook decided to roll it out to our account.

Well, now might be a good time to check your Facebook privacy settings as many Facebook users are reporting that the site has enabled the option in the last few days without giving users any notice.

There are billions of photographs on Facebook’s servers. As your Facebook friends upload their albums, Facebook will try to determine if any of the pictures look like you. And if they find what they believe to be a match, they may well urge one of your Facebook friends to tag it with your name.

The tagging is still done by your friends, not by Facebook, but rather creepily Facebook is now pushing your friends to go ahead and tag you.

Remember, Facebook does not give you any right to pre-approve tags. Instead the onus is on you to untag yourself in any photo a friend has tagged you in. After the fact.

If this is something you’re uncomfortable with, disable “Suggest photos of me to friends” now.

Here’s how you do it.

* Go to your Facebook account’s privacy settings.

* Click on “Customise settings”.

* Under “Things others share” you should see an option titled “Suggest photos of me to friends. When photos look like me, suggest my name”.

* Unfortunately at this point you can’t tell whether Facebook has enabled the setting or not, you have to dig deeper..

* Click on “Edit settings”.

* If Facebook has enabled auto-suggestion of photo tags you will find the option says “Enabled”.

* Change it to “Disabled” if you don’t want Facebook to work that way.

* Press “OK”.

Earlier this year, Sophos wrote an open letter to Facebook. Amongst other things, we asked for “privacy by default” – meaning that there should be no more sharing of information without users’ express agreement (OPT-IN).

Unfortunately, once again, Facebook seems to be sharing personal information by default. Many people feel distinctly uncomfortable about a site like Facebook learning what they look like, and using that information without their permission.

Most Facebook users still don’t know how to set their privacy options safely, finding the whole system confusing. It’s even harder though to keep control when Facebook changes the settings without your knowledge.

The onus should not be on Facebook users having to “opt-out” of the facial recognition feature, but instead on users having to “opt-in”.

Yet again, it feels like Facebook is eroding the online privacy of its users by stealth.

You should also take some time to read our step-by-step advice on how best to configure your Facebook privacy settings.

Source :- http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com

  • Facebook changes privacy settings for millions of users – facial recognition is enabled (nakedsecurity.sophos.com)
  • Facebook Unveils Facial Recognition To the World, Remains Opt-Out (readwriteweb.com)
  • Facebook rolls out facial-recognition tool (news.cnet.com)
  • Facebook quietly switches on facial recognition tech by default (go.theregister.com)
  • Security Firm Issues Alert on Facebook Facial Recognition (pcworld.com)
  • Facebook Party Gets Out Of Control After German Girl Forgets Privacy Setting (blogoholic.in)
  • Hypocritical Facebook scores PR own-goal with sleazy attack on Google privacy (pratyushkp.wordpress.com)

You Can Now Tag Pages in Facebook Photos

Published by pratyushkp on May 14th, 2011 - in Social, Technology
Image representing Facebook as depicted in Cru...

Image via CrunchBase

Ever had the urgent need to tag the Coke can you’re holding in that beach picnic picture on Facebook? Well, now you can, as the social network has added the ability to tag Pages in Facebook photos.

Starting Wednesday (although the feature does not appear to be live yet), users will be able to tag Pages for Brands & Products as well as People (more options coming soon) in their Facebook photos.

Tagged photos will appear in the Photos tab of a Page, rather than on that Page’s Wall, and anyone can tag a Page — even if a user hasn’t “Liked” it. Page admins can also nix photos from the tab by going into Edit Page > Posting Options > and unchecking “Users can add photos.”

For those who concerned about their privacy, Facebook assures us that privacy settings will still apply; if your photos are visible to everyone, everyone will be able to see the tagged snap, and if your photos are set to “only friends,” only friends will be able to check out that pic of you standing in front of the local Rite Aid.

This move could definitely be beneficial to certain brands. Imagine if people started tagging themselves wearing, say, Levi’s jeans. All of those snaps would then go to the Levi’s Facebook Page and result in free advertising.

Source :- http://mashable.com

  • You Can Now Tag Pages in Facebook Photos (mashable.com)
  • You Can Now Tag Pages in Facebook Photos (jessidavis.com)
  • Tag Pages in Facebook photos (cnn.com)
  • Now You Can Tag Celebrities In Your Facebook Photos, Too (lockergnome.com)
  • New Facebook Feature: Tag Your Business in Photos (keepthepeakunique.com)
  • Can I make them stop tagging my photos? (debsanswers.wordpress.com)
  • Facebook Launches Photo Tagging for Pages (strategistalks.com)
  • You Can Now Whore Yourself Out by Tagging Products and Corporate Pages on Facebook [Facebook] (gizmodo.com)
  • Facebook Rolls Out Page Tagging in Photos (webpronews.com)
  • Facebook Now Features Photo Tagging for Pages (marketingpilgrim.com)
Tags: Coca-Cola, Coke, , Photograph, , , ,
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