Facebook Privacy Settings – Changes You Should Make Today!

Did you know that, if you haven’t changed your Facebook privacy settings, you are sharing which sites you go to on the web with Facebook by default, without doing anything? Alright, let me back up a little bit and explain.

I’m sure you’ve heard about this little thing called the ‘Like’ button on Facebook. A few months ago Facebook announced to the world that website owners can now place the ‘Like’ button anywhere on their site for users to click on. Literally, anything on the web can be ‘Like’d, allowing for instant personalization. Your favorite sites are automatically socialized, sharing with your friends blog posts you like, brands you like, products you like, and so on.

By default, Facebook’s privacy settings allow for Facebook to collect your web trends (the sites you browse, etc…) regardless of whether you click the ‘Like’ button or not. Facebook is collecting the address of the web site or page you are visiting and the Internet address of the visitor just as soon as that page is loaded. The privacy peeps are pretty peeved because regardless of the users action, the information is still transmitted. Plus…Facebook doesn’t have an easy opt-out solution.

Another thing to be wary of: Even if you opt out of sharing info, it can be shared by your friends to ‘partner sites’. This is another default setting. To completely opt out of these default privacy settings you need to:

Click on ‘Edit Your Settings” under the Applications and Websites section seen above at the bottom left.

Then change the settings under “Info accessible through your friends” and “Instant personalization”. You should also look at your privacy settings for “Public Search” and “Game and application activity as well”. Making these changes should help ease some of your concerns with transmitting data to Facebook that you don’t really want to transmit.

Have you looked at your Facebook privacy settings lately? What are your concerns with Facebook’s privacy policies (or lack thereof)?