Emily’s list: Facebook privacy edition
Chances are that a majority of people you know are on Facebook. I signed in up in college on the day it was released to the University of Texas students; the site started off as something for Ivy League students only, but then trickled to all other colleges, then high schools, then the general public. It has ballooned into an international behemoth with more than 450 million users, according to CNN.com. While more members means you have more friends, family and colleagues to connect with online, it also means more people seeing your information, many of whom shouldn’t have access to that data. Facebook also developed applications and programs such as Facebook Connect, which share your information with outside parties.
It used to be easy to manage your privacy settings to prevent things from going public, but in the last few years, Facebook has made it harder and harder to control who sees what information. Read more…