The release of Facebook Places raised serious privacy concerns for users of the social network. Places allows users to alert their friends to where they are by checking-in to a nearby location, often via mobile phone. Users can also view the location of nearby friends and the information they’ve posted about locations.
Critics of the feature point out that under Places’ default setting, a user can tag a friend’s location even if that friend is not physically in that location. What’s more, all checkins will appear in the News Feed and activity stream for that place, unless otherwise specified. If this sounds like over-sharing to you and you’d like to opt out, you can change your privacy settings.
This isn’t the first time Facebook
has received criticism for its privacy practices. In fact, Facebook’s problems stretch back to before its founding when then Harvard sophomore Mark Zuckerberg hacked into the school’s network to steal pictures of students for a site that ranked their attractiveness. Below is an infographic tracing the history of privacy snafus that have dogged the platform since its creation.
has received criticism for its privacy practices. In fact, Facebook’s problems stretch back to before its founding when then Harvard sophomore Mark Zuckerberg hacked into the school’s network to steal pictures of students for a site that ranked their attractiveness. Below is an infographic tracing the history of privacy snafus that have dogged the platform since its creation.The graphic below was created for Mashable
by Lisa Waananen.
by Lisa Waananen.
