Privacy changes usually draw the ire of Facebook users, and it’s something that the site is hoping to change through better education and clearer directions. According to a recent infographic from Webpage FX, 61 percent of people surveyed said they didn’t trust Facebook, and 13 million people have said that they have never set or known about their privacy settings.
One of the chief complaints among Facebook users is that the changes to privacy controls have been far too confusing, with little effort in educating the users. Facebook’s No. 2 official — Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg — agrees. She admitted during a launch party in London for her book, Lean In, that one of the key mistakes the company has made was not explaining privacy controls better.
Facebook, The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Mozilla, and the Family Online Safety Institute will team up on Project:Connect, an all-day hackathon in New York Thursday, May 9, aimed at developing social tools, applications, badges, and curriculum to aid younger Internet users in making more responsible choices.
Facebook used its Facebook Mobile DevCon 2013 event in New York Thursday to announce that 81 of the 100 top-grossing iOS applications, 70 of the 100 top-grossing Android apps, 82 of the 100 top-grossing iOS games, and 75 of the 100 top-grossing Android games are integrated with the social network, and to introduce three new mobile products: easier integration of Open Graph on mobile, an improved login with Facebook, and a new software-development kit for iOS.
A “red alert” has gone viral on Facebook, warning of “the worst virus announced by CNN,” which burns users’ hard drives, but no such virus exists, and the red alert is a hoax, according to Sophos’ Naked Security blog.
As a former con man once pointed out, the more personal information you have publicly on Facebook, the easier it is for an identity thief to strike. NextAdvisor.com compiled an infographic showing how often identity thieves use social media, and what kind of information Facebook users share.
Facebook has added yet another module to the refreshed Timeline design: Groups. Starting today, users will see a place on their Timeline showing open groups they’ve joined. Facebook says this is another way to show off their interests with others who visit their profile.
Facebook launched another initiative aimed at keeping teens safe on the social network, teaming up with the National Association of Attorneys General on a consumer-education program aimed at teens and their parents, elements of which will be hosted on the Facebook Safety page.
When Facebook announced last December that it would roll out new privacy options for users, the social network also said it would change the permissions process for applications, requiring them to break down information they were seeking access to in multiple screens, rather than bunching all of the information together in one permissions screen. Now different renditions of this are being tested.
Facebook officially confirmed that it will roll out the addition of emoticons and actions in status updates, which many users already have access to, saying that U.S. users will get the new feature “in the coming weeks.”
