Facebook: protecting your privacy

Big Brother Watch has long been active in warning young people of the dangers of sharing too much information on their Facebook profiles. Indeed, such is the risk of photographs of drunken nights out at university and politically-correct jokes dogging individuals for decades after they were uploaded, BBW has raised the spectre of young people being forced to change their name in order to escape their 'digital past'.

The American organisation ConnectSafely has today issued a guide designed to educate young people - from teenagers to university students - about how to protect their online privacy to ensure third parties are not able to acces their Facebook profiles.

At thirty two pages, it's long - but the advice is hugely relevant. Click here to download the guide.

By Daniel Hamilton

Comments

[Anon]

I'm very surprised BBW fell for this. Although the facts in the guide are perhaps mostly correct, the philosophy it promotes is a dangerous one — that the most significant things about Facebook are its risks, and that risks are best managed by someone who 'knows best' (despite needing a guide!) and who employs surveillance. That's certainly not what I teach my children.

By the way, the guide recommends telling Facebook your real date of birth. I never give my real date of birth to any web site, because banks use it as a 'security' question.

Also, I think one of the most important ways to manage your privacy on Facebook is to maintain multiple identities there for different sets of friends, but the guide does not even tell you how to do that. Why not? Because doing that would be empowering, and the guide wants to promote dependency on authority.