A new study by Consumer Reports asked what steps Facebook users in the United States were taking to “protect your privacy.” The answers were surprising. About a fourth of respondents said they lied: They chose to “alter personally identifiable information” such as their dates of birth.
The share of Facebook users who confessed to falsifying information, which technically violates Facebook’s terms of service, was a notable increase — about double — from when the same question was posed two years ago. That suggests a heightened level of vigilance not only about how much Facebook users wish to reveal to the world, but also how much they wish to reveal to Facebook, the omniscient observer. Consumer Reports, in its June 2012 issue, described it as “evidence that people are treating Facebook more warily.”
A majority of those who were asked what steps they took to protect their privacy said they tweaked their privacy settings to control who can access their profile page. And about a third of the respondents said they adjusted settings to make sure their personal information wasn’t leaking out to Facebook applications, like games. Nearly one in five said they did none of these things.
Consumer Union, the advocacy arm of the organization that publishes Consumer Reports magazine, has rolled out a petition urging Facebook to improve privacy controls and address user concerns about what information from Facebook can be shared with third parties.
Facebook has repeatedly said that user information belongs to the user, and that the user is entitled to demand a copy of his or her Facebook data. But the vast trove of personal data that Facebook accrues daily can also be leveraged by others.
Facebook applications can glean information not only about the Facebook user who downloads the application, but also about his or her Facebook friends – unless a user explicitly opts out. And every time a user visits a web site with a Facebook widget – a “like” button, for instance – Facebook finds out. It becomes part of the company’s data vault about each of its 900 million users.
In its study, Consumer Reports, the magazine once known for its reviews of dishwashers and station wagons, found that Facebook users revealed a great deal about themselves that could one day be detrimental. That information included posts that identified family members and chronicled their alcohol use. The ubiquitous “like” button signaled a vast array of preferences, from religious to sexual. More than one in four, the magazine reported, shared all of almost all of their wall posts with an audience beyond their Facebook friends.
Consumer Reports offered a box of tips for the Facebook-verbose. “Think before you type,” was number one. “Deactivate,” was number nine.
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