Facebook Audit

Today I spent a couple of hours auditing my facebook account. The reason for that were the recent changes in facebook's privacy policy and especially the way they implemented those changes. I don't have a problem if a change in privacy occurs. Where I have a problem is if a change in the privacy policy is implemented without the users being notified. That's is exactly what facebook has been doing several times over the past few month. The other thing that has been bothering me is the fact that facebook has chosen a 'opt-out' over and 'opt-in' approach. There is a right and a wrong way to do things. To have every user being automatically 'opted-in' is definitely the wrong approach. Besides that there have been several security breaches regarding facebooks privacy settings, and facebook never found it worth it to notify users about that. Today I finally took the time to audit my facebook account, since facebook's privacy settings can no longer be trusted. Here's a quick breakdown what I changed:

I left the 'About Me' Section pretty much the same. It still shows the basic information like Sex, Birthday, Relationship status, Interested In, Looking For, Current City, Hometown, Political & Religious Views.

I deleted my entire Bio, except for my favorite quote.

Work and Education details are completely gone.

I've also removed my Likes and Interests.

Then I went into the application settings and removed all application that I don't regularly use. Next I removed all permissions of that I no longer use on a regular basis. To top the audit off I re-examined all remaining permissions.

I don't think that my Bio, my Work and Education Data and my Likes and Interests should be broadcasted all over the Internet. I just don't think it's a good idea to have all that information made a public record. Furthermore I don't think it's a good idea if facebook shares the above data with 3rd party providers without my explicit permission. That's the main reason why I've reduced my profile pretty much to the bare basics.

I've left the Photos and Videos as the were. I'm not quite willing to de tag and/or remove them yet. I think it is possible that this will become necessary at some time. But then I will have to really question if it wouldn't be easier just to delete the entire account. For right now I'm not willing to go that far.

Of course I'm aware of the fact, that if some of my friends use certain facebook Apps, that these Apps have access to my personal data, although I don't even use those Apps myself. And there is nothing I can do about it. But the less personal Data is available to facebook the less they can broadcast all over the internet.

My email, Skype and IM handle are still part of my public profile. That way anyone who needs to get a hold of me can do exactly that. Anyone who wants to know more personal details about me have to ask me those via email or IM! Of course I posted only my secondary email address to my public facebook profile. If Facebook should misuse my email address... One mouse click and the email address is deleted.