Facebook is asking third-party Open Graph app developers to voluntarily add a private mode to their apps if necessary. Its developer blog post outlines how Spotify and Yahoo! News are tackling Open Graph privacy issues by giving users other options. Without a private mode, some users who initially opted in to sharing their activity may choose not to use an app to listen to an embarrassing song or read a controversial article rather than have that news published.

By getting developers to implement their own private modes, Facebook won’t have to build more privacy controls on its side that might add too much friction to apps that don’t require it, such as those that only share benign content or rarely share at all. An option to retract previously shared activity will also reduce the backlash from users who feel like Facebook infringed on their privacy even though they authorized what a third-party app could share and with whom.

It seems that Facebook’s “frictionless sharing” may have been too frictionless for some. The new app authentication flow announced at f8 lets users permit apps to publish all their future activity without asking them again. While this relieves users from constantly filling out sharing prompts, it occasionally could reveal somewhat sensitive information or cause a chilling effect where users opt not to engage with an app at all rather than share.

Users could always restrict app content to only be shared with certain friends.  The could also visit their profile’s activity log to delete past activity, but only after it had already been shared and possibly seen by friends in the Ticker. Facebook may now look to move away from the term “frictionless sharing” to reduce criticism around privacy.

Following f8, Spotify grew quickly thanks to listening activity published to the Facebook home page Ticker. It also heard user complaints about not wanting news of their listening to guilty pleasures shared to Facebook. It began rolling out a software update that lets users switch into “Private Listening” from the desktop app’s menu. Until they switched back, no listening activity would be shared.

Yahoo! News has implemented a more powerful privacy system that lets users turn “social” on and off, similar to The Independent’s privacy controls we reviewed earlier this month. Users can view a list of their recently read articles and delete that activity from Facebook right from the Yahoo! website. An option to be reminded of one’s privacy settings can also be enabled.

Facebook is taking a Platform-focused approach to privacy. Rather than overlay a one-size-fits-all privacy widget that wouldn’t adapt to different apps, Facebook is asking developers to build what’s right for their audience. This might mean strong controls for apps dealing with sensitive content, or no additional controls for those with a low risk of offending people through sharing.

Facebook already has its own Open Graph privacy controls. What was needed was controls right on the apps themselves, and this blog post should guide developers in that direction. However, if apps don’t voluntarily implement privacy controls when needed and Open Graph app sharing continues to hurt Facebook’s image, it may have to implement a mandatory privacy control system.

Facebook is granting all developers access to a new application authentication flow today that was announced at f8 last month. Developers can now add a description of their app that will be displayed in a redesigned publishing permissions dialog. Extended permissions have been broken out into a second authentication step that explains why an app needs certain data, and lets users revoke specific permissions. Data about publishing permissions dialog impressions and accepts, sources of users, and extended permissions conversion rates are now included in Facebook’s app Insights analytics tool.

The changes will make it clearer to users what permissions they are granting applications, and give them more control of their privacy. The two-step authentication process could increase app install friction in a way that could hurt app growth. However, in the long-run, the revised authentication flow could increase user confidence in the Platform such that users become more comfortable experimenting with new apps.

Facebook has also changed the way it measures active user counts to only publicly report authenticated users, rather than all users. We’ve written a separate article discussing how this will cause a one-time dip in active user counts that does not actually mean apps have lost users, and explaining how this impacts our AppData tracking service.

Redesigned Permissions Dialog
Previously, users only had to accept one extended permissions dialog to give an application publishing privileges and access to their data. The permissions dialog didn’t explain what that data would be used for, or what the app would publish to a user’s profile. This meant users would sometimes grant privileges they didn’t understand and would get angry when they saw the app had published on their behalf.

The redesigned authentication flow aims to solve this problem. First, users see a dialog asking for permission to install the app and allow it to publish Open Graph activity. It shows users:

The name  and logo of the app
A tag line about the app
A privacy selector for choosing who it can share with
A list of the data types it requires
An “About this app” description of its purpose
Open Graph aggregations previews that show what it can add to a user’s profile Timeline
A link to the Facebook terms of service and privacy policy
A tiny link to report the app as spam
Friends who’ve installed the app
A “Log In and Add t0 Facebook” accept button

Developers can configure what appears in the dialog and the default privacy setting by entering the Developers app and selecting Settings -> Auth Dialog. Once they’ve properly configured the dialog, they can implement it by enabling “Enhanced Auth Dialog” in the Migrations section of the Developers app’s “Advanced Settings”. Facebook says all apps will be migrated to the redesigned dialog by the end of 2011, though it hasn’t released exact migration dates.

Open Graph app developers reorder the aggregation previews. These previews of what an app will publish represent a significant step forward in increasing transparency in the app install process. Facebook could further improve transparency by including a sample Ticker or news feed story from the app in the previews.

Separate Extended Permissions Dialog and Authenticated Referrals
Apps requiring additional, optional privileges such as the ability to publish check-ins or post to a user’s wall will display a second extended permissions dialog after users complete the initial install dialog. This step includes clear descriptions of what each permission means and the option to deny the app these non-essential privileges. Below, the dialog is an explanation provided by the developer for why it requires these permissions.

Before the redesign, users had to grant apps all the extended permissions and then dig into their app privacy settings to revoke certain permissions. This can now be handled as users install an app. Developers should reference the tutorial Facebook posted this week to ensure their apps run properly if some permissions are revoked.

This granular control may improve app install rates from users who are sensitive about a certain type of privacy, such those who don’t want to provide contact information or have content published to the stream on their behalf.

Authenticated Referrals is another option available in the Auth Dialog settings that when enabled causes users clicking a link to an app to see the authentication flow in-line being being brought to the app. This is useful for apps that require user data or permissions to function. It allows them to remove the awkward pre-permissions landing page and provide a personalized experience when users first arrive.

Authentication Data in App Insights
App Insights now displays impressions and accepts, sources of users, and the what privacy setting users are selecting for the authentication dialog and authenticated referrals. The authentication conversion rate will help developers determine if they are asking for too many or unnecessary permissions, or that they need to reword their their explanation for asking for permissions.

Extended permissions are each listed separately in Insights, and display their impressions, click through rate, and how many times they’ve been accepted. Developers can then identify extended permissions with low conversion rates that they may want to stop asking for.

The way applications use or abuse the permissions process has been a problem for Facebook in the past. Without enough transparency, some users would end up regretting that they installed an app that published or content or used their data in ways they didn’t want. They might then blame the Facebook Platform rather than the developer, leading them to avoid using applications in the future.

This increase in transparency and enhanced granular app privacy controls should give users a much clearer sense of what and with who they’re sharing. With time, Facebook may be able to remove the privacy stigma around apps and create a Platform more users want to engage with and more developers want to work on.

I have always admired Yahoo’s Chief Trust Officer Anne Toth, given she has done a great job articulating privacy issues at the Silicon Valley Internet giant. It is one of the areas where Yahoo truly shines.

But I really like the way she quit Yahoo after more than a dozen years there, with a very adorkable and classy status update on Facebook. It’s done with respect for the company and a lot of humor.

I don’t need to say more, except read it:

It’s official — I’ve broken up with my partner of 13 years. Yahoo!, I want you to know that it’s not you. It’s *me*. Really. After 13 years, I am just not the same person I was when we met. It’s not a midlife crisis. It’s just time to move on. Try new things. You’ll always be my first…Internet company. You changed my life and I will remember you forever. I know you’ll have a hard time adjusting at first, but once you find a new privacy person, you’ll forget about me in a heartbeat. Company’s are fickle that way. But we had something really special. A unique bond. I hope you’ll remember me for giving you the best years of my life.

Talk of government regulation of web entities has been all over the news lately, from the near daily privacy complaints to Google’s antitrust woes to questions about how the Fourth Amendment applies to email. While these are important discussions to have, almost every attempt to shoehorn current practices into existing legal frameworks suffers from a common problem: Yesterday’s laws are antiquated in a web-driven world that rarely sits still.

Software development is always evolving and advancing, and business models and cultural norms evolve along with it. Entirely new capabilities spring up regularly, and business models can change overnight, meaning a law written to address a specific concern can fast become obsolete or, perhaps worse, a hindrance to innovation. Three recent situations illustrate what I’m talking about.

Netflix, Facebook and privacy
I’ve discussed the issue of online privacy in numerous posts, and two considerations strike me as absolutely critical. One is that in the free-to-consumers-but-ad-supported business model that underpins most social media, data is the currency. Failure to recognize this and allow certain freedoms could cripple not only the user experience, but also the high rate of analytics innovation that companies like Facebook produce.

Another — probably even more important issue — is an apparent failure to acknowledge that social norms are changing with regard to how willingly citizens share their information. My colleague Ryan Lawler wrote about a prime example of this disconnect earlier this week, in the form of congressmen debating the decades-old, reactionary and wholly archaic Video Privacy Protection Act that currently prevents U.S. consumers from automatically displaying their Netflix rentals on Facebook.

That law, which prohibits companies from publicly sharing viewer records, “was enacted in the wake of the Robert Bork’s Supreme Court nomination hearings (after Bork’s video rental records were released to a newspaper by his local video store).”

The problem — aside from the its reactionary and therefore inherently inflexible foundation — is that the law was written in an era when video stores still existed (and were the primary method of renting movies, in fact) and well before the advent of social media. In the latter world, automation and APIs rule, and many users really do want what Facebook calls “frictionless sharing.” Certainly, many more will want it in the future. That might not comport with many congresspersons’ views on personal privacy, but it’s reality.

Google’s violating antitrust laws in what market, exactly?
The recent congressional inquiry into Google’s trade practices highlights the bad fit between traditional antitrust law and the web. Mathew Ingram has written a lot about why the questions about Google’s search dominance are misguided, addressing the question of whether there’s such a thing as consumer harm when we’re talking about free products that no one is forced to use. That point alone highlights a big difference between the web and traditional businesses, but there’s another consideration that’s even more damning.

However, as Mathew also points out, the web world is one of constant disruption, and Google, despite its considerable size, is constantly fighting to define its place in the ecosystem. Antitrust violations require abusing one’s power in a particular market, and Google doesn’t operate in a clearly defined market of any sort. In its inquiry, Congress focused heavily on search as the relevant market, but that’s fast becoming yesterday’s news. As Google continues losing traffic to Facebook and other platforms, search becomes part of a broader effort that includes social elements, location services and other components.

This raises questions around how to define the market in which Google actually plays, and whether it’s actually even in the lead. Sure, there’s search for the sake of search, but if Google’s search engine is part of a greater platform market that aims to connect users with relevant information, services and other people, then it’s arguable that Google doesn’t have a monopoly position at all.

No warrant needed for tweets
Then there’s the old argument over what web-based activities are covered by the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable search and seizure. This issue reared its head again when we learned that Twitter, Google and an ISP called Sonic.net had been forced to turn over information about a particular WikiLeaks supporter. The law in question, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (or ECPA), was enacted in 1986 — ages ago in technology terms — and services such as Twitter fall far beyond its scope.

There’s a fair amount of momentum to amend the act (something attorney Nolan Goldberg and I discussed during a chat at Structure 2011), but you have to wonder how thoroughly that actually can be done. We still don’t really know how it applies to email, especially of the web-based variety. But in the past few years alone Facebook, Twitter, text messages and other communication methods have usurped email’s dominance.

Assuming an amended ECPA fairly addresses today’s forms of electronic communications, it will take some careful wording to account for tomorrow’s methods that have yet to emerge. The alternative, given the pace of innovation, is a constant battle over what communications are constitutionally protected, which only serves to hinder adoption and stoke fears over undue government surveillance.

There’s no easy answer
Unfortunately, while it’s easy to criticize existing laws, figuring out a workable strategy for regulating the web is difficult. Laws and regulations by nature involve establishing boundaries so those of us tasked with following them know what we can and can’t do. But because code can be edited, added and rolled back with relative ease, nothing is ever static — and we don’t always know what we’ll be doing next.

Image courtesy of Flickr user RecoilRick.

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Facebook’s business is built on trust, but that trust has been shaken over the past few weeks by criticism and speculation regarding how it uses browser cookies to get data about users.

A lack of thorough documentation explaining what each of its cookies does has led some observers to assume that the company is tracking offsite browsing behavior in order to target ads. Facebook needs to provide explanations for both the average user and privacy researchers about how exactly its cookies work in order to prevent these press flare-ups from giving users a negative impression and bringing on regulatory scrutiny from governments.

Some bloggers claim cookies left by Facebook and third-party sites that integrate its social plugins indicate that the company is tracking users’ web browsing behavior, then using that data to target ads in a way that violates user privacy. Facebook has refuted the claims, saying that users agree to receive the cookies and that the cookies are used to enhance site security and power the social plugins, not create a profile of a user’s offsite behavior to better target ads against.

Unfortunately for Facebook, the claims are still giving off a negative impression of the service and sparking complaint letters to government agencies from privacy advocate groups. A patent application for the company’s social plugins that included language about tracking and targeting ads has also helped fuel the controversy.

While Facebook does currently include some explanation of how it uses cookies in its privacy policy and Help Center, this information clearly isn’t complete, comprehensible, or prominent enough to deflect criticism. Facebook engineer Gregg Stefancik, who has responded to critics on blog comments, even noted “we haven’t done as good a job as we could have to explain our cookie practices.”

Facebook could have avoided much of the crises by being more transparent about it how it uses cookies. We believe Facebook should consider drawing up two dedicated documents explaining how it uses cookies and tracks offsite activity. Much like its “re-imagined privacy policy”, there could be one simple version designed for the average user and a second detailed version for privacy advocates. The company also needs to demonstrate that is doing what it says it in a way that observable by outside parties.

Cookie Criticism: The Issues to Date
Since the launch of social plugins and before, Facebook has left cookies on the browsers of people who sign up for accounts as well as anyone else who visits Facebook.com. These cookies are used to protect the site against hacking attempts and to show logged in users what their friends have Liked on third-party sites, the company has repeatedly said.

Facebook’s privacy policy says the following: “We receive data whenever you visit a game, application, or website that uses Facebook Platform or visit a site with a Facebook feature (such as a social plugin). This may include the date and time you visit the site; the web address, or URL, you’re on; technical information about the IP address, browser and the operating system you use; and, if you are logged in to Facebook, your User ID.”

The Help Center follows with more detail: “We use cookies to make Facebook better and easier to use, to provide you with a more personalized experience, to improve the ads that you see, and to protect you, others, and Facebook from malicious activity. We do not use cookies to create a profile of your browsing behavior on third-party sites or to show you ads, although we may use anonymous or aggregate data to improve ads generally.”

In May 2011, The Wall Street Journal reported that Dutch security researcher Arnold Roosendaal discovered that sites integrating Facebook’s social plugins were leaving cookies on the browsers of users who had never visited Facebook.com and were transmitting browsing data back to Facebook. Facebook said this was a bug and that it discontinued the practice of social plugins leaving the “datr” cookie.

On September 25th, 2011, Nik Cubrilovic wrote that Facebook was maintaining several cookies on the browsers of users even after they log out, and that these cookies include a User ID and could be used to target ads.

Facebook engineer Gregg Stafancik responded that the cookies were used for security purposes, not ad targeting, stating that “generally, unlike other major Internet companies, we have no interest in tracking people. We don’t have an ad network and we don’t sell people’s information.” He then outlined how Facebook uses its cookies:

The logged out cookies, specifically, are used primarily for safety and security protections, including:
– Identifying and disabling spammers and phishers
– Disabling registration if an underage user tries to re-register with a different birth date
– Helping people recover hacked accounts
– Powering account security features, such as login approvals and notifications
– Identifying shared computers to discourage the use of “Keep me logged in.”

He repeated that the cookie that identifies a user was the result of a bug. He noted “thanks, again for raising these important issues. We haven’t done as good a job as we could have to explain our cookie practices. Your post presents a great opportunity for us to fix that.”  The information Stefancik detailed in the comments of the post about how cookies are used for logged out users currently appears in the Help Center, although it’s unclear if it was added here since Cubrilovic’s post was published.

On September 27th, Cubrilovic wrote that Facebook had fixed the bug causing the cookie containing UIDs to be retained after log out, and that this cookie was now destroyed after log out.

On October 1st, Uncrunched published an article titled “Brutal Dishonesty” outlining how Facebook had said it does not track users, but that on September 22nd filed a patent application that includes the line “A method is described for tracking information about the activities of users of a social networking system while on another domain.” The language in the patent indicated that the information at least had the potential to be used to target Facebook ads.

A Facebook representative commented on the post in an official capacity to say that the patent merely describes how Facebook’s social plugins work to show logged in Facebook users the Likes of their friends without them having to log into Facebook again on a third-party site. The comment downplayed the idea that Facebook is currently using the data to target ads — although we don’t have a way to independently verify if it is or isn’t, or that it won’t in the future.

On October 3rd, Cubrilovic wrote that he had discovered the datr cookie was still being left by some Facebook-integrated third-party websites. In response to Facebook’s claim that it doesn’t track users, he wrote “I believe them when they say this and that they are not hiding anything, but I also believe that our definitions of tracking differ. If you set a cookie on a users machine from one website, and then read that cookie from that person’s machine from another website, that is tracking.”

Stefancik then commented on the post on the morning of October 4th to say that “as we discussed last week, we are examining our cookie setting behavior to make sure we do not inadvertently receive  data that could be associated with a specific person not logged into Facebook. We have been made aware of 2 instances in the past 2 weeks related to cookies which needed to be addressed. What you describe in this post is not a re-enabling of anything, but a separate issue involving a limited number of sites, including CBSSports. We have moved quickly to investigate and resolve this latest issue which will be fully addressed today.”

Facebook Needs Documentation to Refer to
The fact that Facebook had to comment directly on three blog posts in an attempt to debunk speculation shows there is a lack of clear documentation explaining its use of cookies. By publishing its responses as governing documents and making them easy to find, Facebook could address users’ questions before they draw their own, sometimes-negative conclusions about the company’s intentions.

We should note that a wide variety of other web companies, specifically online advertising service providers, have aggressively tracked and in many cases inappropriately used information about users, often aggregating and reselling user data without the user having any idea of what they are doing. Facebook wants to be seen as above the controversies surrounding the industry — and because so many users opt in to share their data to Facebook by joining and using the service, that claim appears to by and large be true. Yet the combination of unclear explanations, past issues, and the patent are getting in the way of its effort to explain its case.

The onus is now on Facebook to fully explain how it does and does not track users across the web and use that information back on Facebook — and prove what it says through the technology that it deploys across the web.

If you didn’t watch Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook announcements last week — and of course the vast majority of Facebook users did not — you may be in for a surprise. Aside from the dramatically redesigned Facebook Timeline profile pages, which roll out in the coming weeks (and which I’ve grown to love), Facebook’s new system to auto-share what you do around the web may catch many Facebook addicts off guard.

In fact, even those people who know exactly how this new feature works may need to be on guard against sharing some seriously embarrassing updates.

For those not in the loop: Facebook is making sharing even easier by automatically sharing what you’re doing on Facebook-connected apps. Instead of having to “Like” something to share it, you’ll just need to click “Add to Timeline” on any website or app, and that app will have permission to share your activity with your Facebook friends.

What activity, you ask? It could be the news articles you read online, the videos you watch, the photos you view, the music you listen to, or any other action within the site or app. Facebook calls this auto-sharing “Gestures.”

Can you see the possible issue here?

I’m pretty familiar with this auto-sharing function since it’s been a feature of The Huffington Post for a good while now. The way it works there: Once you join the site, every article you read is shared with your friends via an activity feed (unless you switch that feature off).

So right now I can see that someone I know professionally read “Scarlett Johansson Nude Photos” and a male colleague, who will remain anonymous, recently read the following:

1. “Conan O’Brien Stares At Nicole Scherzinger’s Cleavage”

2. “Heather Morris On Breast Implants”

3. “Perrey Reeves Shows Off Bikini Body (PHOTO)”

Now Facebook is bringing this functionality to every application out there.

I’m not saying this is a bad idea as such, but people need to be aware of what they’re signing up for when they add apps to the Timeline. Even my tech-savvy friends seem to set up these auto-share apps, completely forget about them, and return to doing things they wouldn’t necessarily want to share with all their friends.

Heck, I even find myself doing it.

Just a few days ago I added the Washington Post Social Reader app to my profile — this is one of many new news apps that auto-shares what you’re reading with your friends. Later, I returned to the app, forgot about that feature, read a ton of articles and realized they were all on my Facebook Timeline.

Now I didn’t read anything particularly saucy like my HuffPo friends did, but even that slight lapse was enough for me to uninstall the app completely.

So what can you do to avoid a Facebook privacy faux pas? Be aware that whenever you click a “Add to Timeline” button on a website or app from now on, you’re giving that app permission to post your activity to Facebook.

Most of the time you might be fine with this — like sharing the music you listen to on Spotify with friends (unless you like Rebecca Black) — but other times it might be worth disabling this function after you approve the app.

SEE ALSO: The New Facebook: How to Take Control of Your Privacy

Also note that when you add an app to your Timeline, you get the option to share your activity with “Public,” “Friends” or “Custom.” By clicking “Custom,” you get the option to hide your activity from everyone but yourself — see the steps below for more information on controlling your privacy with the new sharing features:


Adding an App to Your Facebook Timeline


Whenever an app wants to add updates to your Facebook Timeline, this box will appear.

Controlling Who Sees Your Activity


Clicking the people icon next to "This activity is visible to:" lets you control who will see your activity from the app. You can share your activity with the Public, Friends or specific Friend Lists.

Custom Privacy Settings for Gestures


If you click "Custom", you get more privacy options, including the ability to block certain people from seeing your activity.

Only Me Privacy


If you feel uncomfortable sharing your activity from the app, you can select "Only Me". This means that your will see your activity from the app on your Timeline, but no one else will.

Should you worry about Facebook’s new Gestures functionality? No, but even the most technical among us should be aware that sharing everything is not always wise, and that selecting the right privacy settings can protect you against any mistakes.

READ THIS NEXT: Facebook Privacy: 3 Fights to Expect When You Get the New Timeline

This post reflects the opinions of the author and not necessarily those of Mashable as a publication.


The New Facebook Profile: Timeline


Timeline is a radical departure from previous versions of the Facebook user profile. The most prominent feature is the addition of a cover photo at the top of the page. Users can change this to whatever they'd like it to be.

1987


In 1987, my sister was born. Facebook knows these life events and includes them in your timeline.

Being Born


You can even add a picture and context to your birth, which starts the Timeline.

Timeline Interface


The Timeline is a two-column interface with top photos, status updates, friends and more.

Map


Facebook has added a feature that lets you see where you have visited. This is powered by Facebook Places.

Photos in the Timeline


Here's how photos are displayed in the Timeline.

Friends in the New Timeline


Here's what the Friends page looks like.

Changing Settings


Some of the new Timeline's customization features.

2009


More of the new Timeline

Getting Married


You can add life events, such as getting married, to your profile through the Publisher Bar. You can also announce that you broke a bone, got a new job, etc.

More About: Facebook, facebook timeline, privacy

How much is your personal data worth? Will photos you post on Facebook or your Foursquare check-in data get you into trouble in five years’ time? In one of the standout talks at this week’s O’Reilly Strata Summit, author and Boing Boing editor Cory Doctorow explained why people undervalue their privacy and how data-driven companies exploit this mis-pricing of privacy.

The privacy bargain we make with tech companies usually involves giving up some personal data in return for a free service, as with Facebook or many mobile applications.

Doctorow argues that it’s hard for people to assign a value to personal data when the full consequences of giving up that data are still unknown. How do you determine whether the privacy bargain is a fair one?

“It’s hard to get worked up about things where the failure and the deed are separated by a long way,” said Doctorow. “It’s the same reason that people start smoking.”

He insists data-driven companies such as Facebook actively exploit users by soliciting as much data as possible. “Facebook trains you to undervalue your privacy. These companies are [full of] social scientists now and those people have read their Skinner (an American behaviorist), have read their Adler (founder of the school of the school of individual psychology) and they understand intermittent reinforcement.” In exchange for posting status updates, photos and other information, Facebook users are intermittently rewarded with attention from people they care about. This mechanism can have addictive qualities similar to gambling.

“Eli Pariser, who wrote The Filter Bubble, told me someone at Facebook explained to him that they know that men who have female friends who post photos of themselves, spend more time on the site,” reports Doctorow. “They know that women who see their friends post photos, upload photos in response. So if a man who used the site a lot then dropped off, they look for women in his social group, show them pictures of their girlfriends, the women post pictures back and then the men stay on. This is not the bargain.”

Another form of social manipulation practiced by tech companies involves search results and news feeds.

“The algorithms by which things like Facebook decide what to show you and what to hide are totally opaque. There’s this kind of weird, big lie about how an algorithm is not a form of editorial control. Google will say ‘we have organic search results’ in contrast with what Alta Vista used to do, where they would take payment to put a result first. It’s ‘organic’ because it’s done with math, but actually it’s editorial by another name. All the companies that do editorial by algorithm claim that there’s something about math that makes it free of bias and will.”

Tech companies often do not offer clear or easy privacy choices to users. Facebook constantly changes its privacy settings to push the default towards more public data, and its Byzantine custom privacy settings are bewildering for a new user. “Complexifying a proposition is usually there to stop you from finding out whether the deal is good,” comments Doctorow.

With mobile applications, the choice is often between giving the application all the data it requests or not installing it at all. “Imagine apps that let you iterate through privacy decisions when they arise, not making a lot of a priori decisions,” explains Doctorow. “Apps that start from a presumption of privacy, and when your privacy settings interfere with your stated desire to access a service, in that moment you are prompted to make the decision.”

More generally, Doctorow says we need simpler cookie managers: “One of the things you can do is give people meaningful choices in their browsers. That would be way more useful to me than giving them hard to enforce, impossible to audit, privacy legislation.”

He also thinks that the way we approach educating children about privacy is flawed. “We have this weird contradiction in our school system where all the grown-ups in the school spend all their time wagging their fingers at kids saying ‘Get off the Facebook, every disclosure you make is something precious that you lose forever ‘ but ‘I’m spying on every click you do, spying on every IM you send, spying on all your Facebook conversations’ just like a parent who has 3 fags in his mouth and says ‘You shouldn’t smoke because it’s bad for you,’” he says.

“We could start by teaching kids to jailbreak every device, break every firewall, to do all the things that will make them good at privacy. It’s a learned skill. If kids can compete to see who can divulge the least information to the grown-ups in their lives, we will, by definition, get kids who are better at not divulging information than kids who are punished every time they try to prevent grown-ups from looking at their information.”

One of the reasons that we undervalue our personal data seems to be that the threat is not visceral and concrete. “In technology we often have this core problem of taking a fairly abstract social harm and rendering it concrete,” concludes Doctorow. “I think science fiction is rubbish at predicting the future, but it can create narratives that become part of our discourse. Imagine it’s 1947 and Orwell hasn’t written 1984 yet, and you’re trying to explain to someone why you don’t want to be electronically surveiled.”

Filed under: social, VentureBeat

Fencing in the range with Flickr's new Geofence features
The popular photo sharing website Flickr has introduced a new way to geotag your photos without revealing your location to the entire web. Flickr’s new “Geofence” settings give users more granular control over their geotagged photos.

Perhaps the best part of the new Geofence features are how dead simple they are to use — simply draw a circle on a map, choose a geoprivacy setting for that area, and you’re done. Your new fence will apply to any future photo uploads and Flickr will offer to update the privacy settings on any existing images that fall within your new fence.

To get started head over to the Flickr Geo privacy page.

These days geotagging isn’t just something for nerds. In fact, chances are your camera (especially the camera in your phone) is recording location data in your images whether you know it or not. Like other location-aware services, geotagged photos are fast becoming a big part of the current cultural debate about who should be able to see which parts of your life on the web.

“A few years ago, privacy controls like this would have been overkill. Geo data was new and underused, and the answer to privacy concerns was often, ‘you upload it, you deal with it,’” writes Flickr developer Trevor Hartsell on the code.flickr blog. “But today, physical places are important to how we use the web. Sometimes you want everyone to know exactly where you took a photo. And sometimes you don’t.”

Previously, Flickr limited its geotagging options to a simple yes or no — either you shared location data with everyone or no one. Now you can share location data with only those people you trust. For example, you might leave the geodata for your vacation photos visible to everyone, but limit the location data of photos around your house to only your friends and family.

In those cases where there might be overlap between two geofences Flickr will default to the more restrictive of the two. For example, if you draw a circle around your house and limit it to the most restrictive group, “Family,” and then draw a circle around your whole neighborhood and limit that to “Friends,” any areas where the two overlap will still be limited to only the Family group.

Flickr’s new Geofence settings are among the best implemented privacy controls we’ve seen, striking a nearly perfect balance between genuine control and simplicity. And while we’re glad to see Flickr taking the lead, here’s hoping Facebook and others will copy these features into their own privacy controls.

See Also:

Mining Flickr to Build 3-D Models of the World
Flickr Goes Native With Windows Phone 7 App
New Flickr Is Bigger, Wider and Uncut

his is a column about a pair of Internet entrepreneurs, the start-ups that they founded, and the tremendous worldwide convulsions they unleashed in 2010. Like many high-tech mavens, the two men in question have many qualities in common. Both are coding gurus of the highest order, brilliant but socially maladroit, elusive and reclusive. Both are at once mono- and (at least somewhat) megalomaniacal. By the time you read this, either one may well have been chosen as Time’s Person of the Year; both are on the magazine’s short list. Yet for all their similarities, there are striking differences, too. The other day, one of them—the 26-year-old American whose company has made him a billionaire—pledged to give the majority of his wealth to charity. Two days earlier, the other—the 39-year-old Australian whose firm has made him an enemy of the state—was thrown in jail.

The difference in reactions toward the two depends on whose privacy is threatened.

" Safari v4 & v5, with a combined market browser share of 4% (~83 million users), has a feature (Preferences > AutoFill > AutoFill web forms) enabled by default. Essentially we are hacking auto-complete functionality."

Uncheck the AutoFill web forms options and use 1Password instead; much more secure anyway.

"Foursquare had nine days to write a simple blog post, acknowledging the hole, explaining the fix and telling users they could opt out in the future and giving credit to Andersen. That’s how responsible disclosure works. But the company didn’t do any of those things."

"To manage your privacy on Facebook, you will need to navigate through 50 settings with more than 170 options. Facebook says it wants to offer precise controls for sharing on the Internet."

"Facebook has gone rogue, drunk on founder Mark Zuckerberg’s dreams of world domination. It’s time the rest of the web ecosystem recognizes this and works to replace it with something open and distributed."

"By scrutinizing your purchases, credit companies try to figure out if your life is about to change—so they’ll know what to sell you."

If Schmidt doesn't think people's privacy is important he should post his own search history and email contact list on the web and get back to us with a lecture on the Patriot Act.

Join in the dialogue among all of the stakeholders – businesses, individuals, government agencies, non-profit groups, academics, teachers and students – to look more thoroughly at how advanced technologies affect our daily lives.

Though forthcoming, my friend was anxious to preserve her anonymity; Facebook employees, after all, know better than most the value of privacy. As she is not permitted to divulge company secrets, and would like to remain employed, her name has been omitted from this interview. It provides an interesting snapshot of the inner workings and culture of Facebook in the summer of 2009.

Go to History tab, hit show in sidebar, highlight website then edit delete.

The beauty of Facebook’s many features is that now you can choose what you show and to what type of people. By using friend lists and playing with your privacy settings, you can create different views for each segment of your life.

Opting out of a network does not mean you will no longer receive online advertising. It does mean that the network from which you opted out will no longer deliver ads tailored to your Web preferences and usage patterns.

The Gmail team has unveiled a new Labs feature called “Location in Signature.” Just head into the Gmail “Labs” tab, click on “Settings,” and head into the signature preferences. There, you can now opt to have your present location appended onto the end of every e-mail you send.

The most common retort against privacy advocates -- by those in favor of ID checks, cameras, databases, data mining and other wholesale surveillance measures -- is this line: "If you aren't doing anything wrong, what do you have to hide?"

Federal agents may take a traveler's laptop or other electronic device to an off-site location for an unspecified period of time without any suspicion of wrongdoing

If we teach everyone to be alert for photographers, and terrorists don't take photographs, we've wasted money and effort, and taught people to fear something they shouldn't.

One of the strangest and most enthralling aspects of personal blogs is just how intensely personal they can be. I’m talking “specific details about someone’s S.T.D.’s” personal, “my infertility treatments” personal. There are nongynecologica

One popular subscriber has put his Twitter account up for sale on eBay, prompting a fiery debate over ethics and commerce online

Google controls your e-mail, your videos, your calendar, your searches… What if it controlled your life?

You can check out but you can never leave.