Just Check In, we'll sort out the rest!

With great power comes great responsibility but I guess Zuckerberg didn’t watch SpiderMan. Turning on features without appropriately (an email would be nice!) notifying the users (unless you follow their blog) is probably becoming a norm. It is assumed that all the users will get the news. But when the change, in this case a new feature, influences 500 million + users’ privacy, I believe there has to be some sort of notification mechanism. Well, tough luck Facebook users, it is not yet to be. This particular change is not as bad for those outside the US as Facebook Places feature is only active in the US. However, each user's the profile ‘Privacy Settings’ will show three new entries/settings that default to:

Things I share:

Places I check in = ‘Friends Only’

Include me in “People here now” after I check in = ‘Enable’ checked

Things others share:

Friends can check me in to places = ‘Select one’ (Enabled/Disabled)

Ideally, one would have liked the new features to be set as per the user’s preference but again, Facebook has set it for you. One would have preferred a notification to enable the Places feature on user’s permission and then asked the user to set the above three settings to their own liking. Anyway, if you don’t like Places, just disable it as below by going into Account>Privacy Settings>Customise Settings

Often in business, due to competition the end user benefits. With personal data at stake, in this particular case it seems the cost is privacy.

Personally, ‘Friends Only’ setting is quite generic and ‘Friends’ on Facebook does not really accurately reflect real life relationships. Facebook 'Friends' can be classed into acquaintances, friends and close friends in real world. One may not want all 'Friends' to see status updates, locations, photos, videos etc. In this case, the ‘lists’ functionality within Facebook can be used to group friends into appropriate lists and fine tune the privacy settings to restrict sharing. But things may get a little complicated there. The privacy update earlier this year didn’t do much for the user in this regard. It was a well presented screen/facade to the same behind the scene workings that enticed the users to ‘recommended’ settings and silence the critics. Prof. Ross Anderson sums it up very aptly in an OWASP podcast , Facebook is trying something extremely difficult here and it is going to have to face many challenges in the road ahead.

For the readers interested further in Facebook Privacy Settings, Sophos has a good basic guide to the settings here.