Protect Your Privacy On (and FROM) Facebook

This week, Facebook announced that you AND your friends will now be able to share information about you with websites. Needless to say, this has huge impact on the very nature of the web and the privacy of every Facebook member.

It is causing quite a stir in the blogsphere. There are quite a few people who don't have their privacy setting secure and are already sharing too much information through and on Facebook. These people may have just had that problem compounded to the Nth degree with this latest change. Even people who are sharing things only with friends can be significantly impacted.

I've made a presentation that goes over some of the key settings you need to check to make sure your information is private and what takes place in Facebook stays in Facebook. Well, that isn't really true. Once you post something online, you lose control of it and it can go anywhere. However, there is no need to make it that much easier for you to share unwanted information with the world.

Here is a link to the presentation and if you want to download it to show to others, here is a link to a downloadable version in PDF format.

How to Lose at Russian Roulette

I've made a few posts about ChatRoulette, but that's not the topic of this post. The only relationship is that when you go to ChatRoulette, the site automatically turns on your web camera. That is the topic of this post. If you have a web camera, you need to know that it is not entirely under your control. Malware or other software installed on your computer can be accessed remotely and can turn it on.

The most recent example of this took place in the Lower Marion School District in PA. In the past few days there have been more than 2000 articles posted about this. A quick Google search for web camera spying will round up most of them for you.

In case you haven't read anything about out, the administration had the ability to turn on web cameras on laptops issued in the schools 1-to-1 program. Apparently, an assistant principal disciplined a student for improper use of the computer at home and used a picture taken with the web camera as evidence. The result is a class action suit and an F.B.I. investigation.

I can't begin to fathom what was going through the asst. principal's mind when he started to activate cameras in order to police inside students' homes. The idea that anyone would do this is almost beyond comprehension. It's like playing Russian roulette with a revolver carefully loaded with 6 live rounds. You can spin the chamber as many times as you like, but the first time you pull the trigger, you will shoot yourself in the head.

Who knows how many cameras were activated or a how what he saw before he found someone doing something wrong, but the first time he acted on what he saw, the shot was heard around the world.

Aside from quickly ending his career, this incident will have significant impact on programs in both education and business. Software similar to that used in Lower Marion is used routinely by business. In all cases, the use is supposed to be for security, but the potential for abuse is something that is built into every computer that carries that kind of software.

It's going to be interesting to watch how far the ripples of this incident travel.