Facebook Privacy Preferences Sparks Confusion

Posted by Nick O'Neill on May 12th, 2008 8:57 AM

I got an email from a Facebook user today who had noticed that some of their privacy settings had been adjusted. The new change was the removal of the online status privacy setting within the user’s privacy settings page. The online status has now been moved to chat toolbar. While you can toggle your online status on and off, the one setting that isn’t there is the ability to differentiate your online status for friends and those that you aren’t connected to.

My guess is that the online status has now been limited to friends only. Whatever the case is for the new settings, a number of users started a discussion about the new privacy settings. I have a feeling that most of these individuals simply don’t understand the settings. As the platform continues to evolve, privacy settings will be adjusted and for a few people this will create confusion. Facebook should provide users with a description on how to adjust their settings given the new modifications.

This also emphasizes how users leverage their privacy settings to have different interactions with different people on the site. Many people use the settings so that they can protect themselves from having unwanted access to their profile by people they don’t know. Have you ever been confused by Facebook’s privacy settings? Are there additional settings that you think would be useful?

This entry was posted on Monday, May 12th, 2008 at 8:57 am and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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Martin 3 months ago 1 point
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Would be great if there was an option just to view what your profile looks like to different people (ie friends on each friend list, non-friends in the same network, non-friends in different networks etc)rather than looking at each thing and having to think about it you could just glance and see if something was visible that shouldnt be!

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