There is a new social networking site called Zebo. The idea of Zebo is that you list all of your possessions. So along with all of the other privacy-dunces on Facebook and the like, you can now have your very own page on the internet saying, “burgle me!” (Via)

I guess people are just really stupid. Time for people to wise up about the web. It’s dead easy. If you post something on the internet, people can see it. That means: authority figures, parents, current employers, potential future employers, everybody.

Top Law Student (down at the moment; mirror here) has a post reminding you that your MySpace page is available to anyone. (I guess even if you set your MySpace to ‘private’ it won’t really work because MySpace is crumbly and insecure.) There is also the discussion on Digg.

I had assumed that most people are aware of this. Employers do look up job applicants on Google. It’s a basic security check; common sense if you’re an employer. And when they search for you, they see all the shit you put on the web under your name. That includes all of the ridiculous embarrassing stuff you put on MySpace, Facebook, Bebo, everything.

If this scares you, then follow the advice on Top Law Student. Delete your MySpace page, or change it all so that you’re anonymous. Me? I will just be sensible about what I put on MySpace, this blog, and anywhere else on the internet. Obviously that limits what I can write about. But life isn’t perfect. If you wouldn’t put it on a billboard on the street, don’t put it on the internet. Simple as that.

It is an interesting issue though. I reckon the number of young people who have some kind of web presence — be it a blog like mine or a MySpace or a Bebo or whatever — is probably approaching something like 90–100%. The vast majority of them are written as though only friends can read them.

I guess employers would have to be really naive to expect all of their employees to be squeaky-clean. But it is obviously rather better for them not to be 100% aware of your debaucheries. But if everybody puts embarassing shit on their MySpace that could put potential employers off, employers will probably find themselves fast running out of good candidates. They will probably have to start choosing the least-worst person for the job instead of (in their eyes) a really good person.

Of course, now that I’ve given a big lecture on it, I will probably find myself being pwned by a potential employer for something I’ve written on my blog at some point. I’m half expecting one day to wake up and find an angry crowd of lone protesters, each one angry about something different I wrote in the dim and distant past. One despises me for recommending an Autechre album. Another thinks I’m an idiot for siding with Michelin in the US Grand Prix fiasco. A small cluster wants to burn me at the stake because I think the text function on my iRiver is useless.

But I’m willing to take responsibility for what I’ve written. I hope, when I am ready to enter the Big Bad World, I will be able to work in an environment where my blog won’t be an issue. Maybe that’s wishful thinking, but hey, I’m a blogger. That’s just who I am. I don’t see this as a reason to run scared of the internet. I hope my activity is a positive thing.

Obviously it is far too late for me to attempt to hide myself on the internet now. Early on I made a decision not to hide my identity. But at the same time I didn’t force it down people’s throats. For a period I never mentioned my name on this blog. But in the end I decided to actually push my identity a bit more, but to be sensible about what I write.

claimID is one way to do it, but the jury is out on whether or not it’s of any good use. I’ve also devised my own little way (it’s unfinished, by the way) to keep tabs on my internet activity. On the one hand it might seem a bit narcissistic, but hopefully it gives me a bit of control over my identity on the internet.

I thought I’d write a little guide to privacy on Facebook because clearly it is sorely needed.

Facebook is a social network. Essentially, it’s designed to connect friends together. Facebook is quite an exclusive place. The only way you can sign up is if you are in a supported network (usually a university — for instance, my network is Edinburgh (University)), and you must sign up using your university email address.

By default your profile is hidden from people outside your network. Nobody who isn’t also in Edinburgh can see my profile, unless they’re a friend from another network. But you can choose for your profile to be yet more private. See the ‘My Privacy’ button? Anybody can set their profile up so that only approved friends can see it.

Recently there was a lot of controversy when Facebook launched new features: news feed and mini feed. These features essentially provided a list of actions that people have done on Facebook such as groups you’ve joined, new interests and so on.

None of this changed the privacy settings. Your actions were still only visible to your network, or just your friends if you wished. All of the information provided in the news feed and the mini feed were already available anyway: the new features merely aggregated it all into one convenient space.

But the new features were massively unpopular, with many users howling that their privacy was being invaded and that the new features were too “stalker-esque”. But the privacy settings hadn’t changed — all of the information could be hidden from everybody but your friends if you wished. What kind of person adds stalkers to their friends list?

Part of the problem seems to be the fact that the new feeds listed postings to The Wall (a kind of message board attached to each person’s profile, and one of Facebook’s most popular features). For instance, one person left a comment on my last post about Facebook:

I might have just broken up with my girlfriend. I might also have just posted a kinda flirty message on someone else’s message board [Wall] soon after. If you know both these things, you might reasonably infer that I fancy this other person, or even that I broke up with my gf to pursue this other person.

Neither of these actions would have been private in the first place on Facebook. If you change your relationship status, that change is visible to everybody who has access to your profile. If you post on somebody’s Wall, that message is visible to everybody who has access to that Wall. Okay, so maybe with the new features these facts were more obvious with the feeds ‘pushing’ the new data to you. But essentially your information was as private with the feeds as it was without.

One of the most intriguing things about the Facebook furore is the revelation that many, many people appear to use The Wall as a kind of quasi-private messaging centre. This is pretty reckless behaviour on the user’s part. There are a few pretty big clues that The Wall is not the place to be writing messages designed to be private.

Firstly, the name. It’s called The Wall for crying out loud! How private does that sound?! Not very. The analogy it draws is very clear: treat this space like a wall in the street. On this wall you can write whatever you would be prepared to write on a physical, real-life wall.

Another pretty massive clue is the fact that there is a separate private messaging feature! Private messages are not advertised in the new feeds. That’s because they are, unlike The Wall, private. So — get this — if you want to write something private on somebody’s Wall, why not think twice and private message them instead? What a novel thought!

Why not go a step further and use email? I like to use Walls and the like, but when I have something important or private to say to somebody, I always use email. We all have email addresses, so why would anybody consider writing something private on a whimsical social networking feature called ‘The Wall’?!

Did you notice those words I used in that last sentence? Social. Network. A website designed to connect friends. Because Facebook is a social network, its main function is to keep friends in touch. Obviously I will take an interest if one of my friends changes something in their profile or writes something on a Wall. Do you know why? Because they’re my friends. I’m supposed to take an interest in them!

And yes, I do go around reading other people’s Walls. That might sound “stalkerish” to you, so shoot me. I have sometimes been surprised at what I have read on Walls. But I had always assumed that everybody who wrote on a Wall was prepared for that message to be available to be read in a semi-public environment, because that is what the Wall is designed to be.

There is a golden rule that everybody that writes anything on the web will inevitably learn sooner or later. The rule is: write on the web, and people will read it. Don’t expect people not to find something you’ve written, even if you think it’s in a relatively private corner. Google is more powerful than you think.

Anybody who thought that the Wall was a private place was kidding themselves on. And if you don’t want certain “friends” reading your profile, why on earth did you add them as friends? Presumably to keep that friends counter high. Well, serves you right for being such a shameless narcissist.

And now, in yet another “doh, those users of Facebook really are dim” moment, it was actually possible to remove everything from your feeds anyway!

See that ‘X’? That’s not a multiplication sign. It’s only a bloody delete button! Next to every single entry in your feed!

Yesterday, Facebook had to add a whole lot of features that dilute the usefulness of the feeds just to get those maniacs that were setting up e-riots to shut up. A set of new privacy options means that you can now decide what does and doesn’t make it to your feed — or you can just disable the feed completely.

So what has happened? All of my friends have disabled the feed! At least I assume that’s what’s happened, because the feed updates have come to a crunching halt from some point last night. And I know that my friends have updated their profiles. You know how I know? Because it says so in the ‘My Friends’ section. You see? I can still “stalk” my “friends” easily. And that feature has been there ever since I started using Facebook. It’s just one click more difficult, that’s all.

I actually find it quite offensive that somebody would list me as a “friend”, yet feel the need to attempt to hide their activity from me.

So there you have it. A potentially useful new Facebook feature has become almost useless. It could have greased the wheels of the social network, but the site’s users seemed to balk at the realisation that they were using a social network and not some kind of private zone.

This whole furore is not Facebook’s fault. It’s the fault of those dunces who joined groups because they weren’t responsible enough to think through the security implications of:

1. Adding stalkers as “friends”
2. Writing private messages on The Wall

If you were stupid enough to do either of those things, it was you — not Facebook — that endangered your privacy.

Image nabbed from the ‘Quit bitching about the Facebook feed! Its easy to fix!’ Facebook group

This is kind of related to my Facebook post below. Google results for “Confidential “do not distribute”“. Hint: If you want something to be kept private, don’t put it on the internet. And especially don’t flag up confidential information so obviously! (Via.)

You have to feel sorry for the folks at Facebook. Despite the fact that they have made no changes to privacy settings, the site’s users are offended, feeling as though their privacy has been invaded. This is despite the fact that Facebook’s new features don’t reveal any data that wasn’t already out in the open in the first place.

So what’s the gripe? Log in to the home page and you see a big list of pretty mundane data about what your friends have done. It’s not very interesting. “X is at home”, “Y removed walking from his interests”, things like that. Hardly earth-shattering stuff — and it’s all stuff that your friends would have seen anyway, just in a different place.

The ‘mini-feeds’ on each user’s profile have caused the greatest upset though. My mini-feed is pretty boring: there are only two entries so far (1. I’m at home, 2. I’ve added my religious views (another new feature) to my profile). But that’s mostly because I don’t use Facebook so much.

Look at somebody else’s mini-feed, and you’ll get a longer list, but it’s mostly things like “X wrote on Y’s wall” over and over again. And, vitally, this is all information that your friends would have seen anyway. So essentially we have all the same stuff, just put in a different place. And have you seen those little crosses next to each entry in your mini-feed? You can delete every single thing if you want anyway.

All this stuff about making Facebook “stalker-esque” is a bit overblown. For starters, only your friends can see all of this information about you. The same people can see the same information as they could before, just in a different place. And if you’re adding potential stalkers as friends on Facebook, then that’s your own sorry fault for treating the friends counter like a gameshow scoreboard.

Also, if you’re complaining about the new layout being too cluttered, did you not notice that you can actually now toggle everything so that it magically disappears? The little arrow next to every heading?

So the fuss is all a bit confusing for me. I guess students always feel as though they have to have something to rebel against. Makes them feel important.

Personally, I’m a big fan of Facebook’s new features. They allow you to keep tabs on your friends without having to traipse through their profile page all the time. And if you don’t want somebody to take an interest, why did you add them as a ‘friend’?

Article via Digg.

Update: Groups for people who are fed up with the complaints: Quit bitching about the Facebook feed! Its easy to fix!; stfu about new facebook features (via).