Privacy on Facebook, is it a Generation thing?

Privacy on Facebook is still trending topic, with normal people being’ fraped’ and drama’s involving identity theft hitting the press every day.

Common Sense will protect you:

Whenever you want to post something on Facebook, stop and think.
Is this something that anyone would be allowed to see ?
(My mother is on my friends list will she blush!)

If you can feel confident the posting won’t come back and bite you: click the button
If no, think twice before posting !

Maybe you use Facebook to communicate your feelings to friends so you are not prepared to make this consideration each time you want to post something? So take care with your settings what your friends can see. Make sure to do this ! Without these your images and messages can be sent out across the web without you knowing.
Here is a great blogpost on protecting your privacy on Facebook :

http://www.allfacebook.com/facebook-privacy-tips-2010-01

THOSE Embarassing Photos seem funny today... but
This is a guideline to heed and you can be sure that those wild or drunk pictures can only be seen by your drinking mates who were with you at that wild party.
Make sure your boss or colleagues will NOT be able to see this photo album.

Of course I believe authentication is key to protecting users on facebook, and I am sure we will see them taking steps to protect us from the not so funny side of identity theft very soon.

Maybe privacy is most of all a problem of our generation ? The world is changing and so are the rules.

This blogpost and links was inspired by the great Geert Conard- full post below.

http://geertconard.blogspot.com/2010/09/privacy-on-social-media-video.html

Social Rules as debated at last weeks #Mashupevent

Thank goodness for twitter I used the tweet threat to put together the key points of the conversations at last weeks London #Mashup debate on 'The New Rules of Social Media'.

1. Are we trying to enforce 10 year old rules on a new generation who like to be vocal !
2. You wouldn’t go into a pub and scream your personal details to anyone who'll listen! So don’t do it online.
3. There is a need for better regulations to have better security policy from social media sites
4. The rule that hasn't changed: if U upload something online U no longer own it
5. New rule - offline conversations are private, online conversations are broadcast
6. Privacy software is available companies, sites and applications need to adopt it.

It was lively night that bounced around Social media, broadly speaking facebook is still for friends to friends, clever commercial businesses have built successful commercial models around their fanpage and email promotion.

We were introduced to http://www.minutebox.com/, a fantastic new portal where consumers can bid on experts time and enage with them online. Great use of the wave of social internet use to create a business model, this is the way forward for consultancy.

I would like to see new apps, websites and communities taking advantage of new technologies to secure and protect their users. OVERT PLUG here for our new multifactor authentication solution: http://www.liveensure.com/ it is a mash up for developers to integrate into their site or application to website to protect their users. Just like you opt out of mailing and marketing lists it would be great to be able to opt into privacy!

I am putting theTony Fish slides in my blog again this week as they do represent the rapid change in the social space.

New rules for living in a digital age

View more presentations from Tony Fish.