New Facebook Search Means It’s Time to Review Your Privacy Settings (Again)
This morning’s media event was a new tool to find content and data on Facebook that could wind up making information about you far easier your friends or just about anyone else to find. Graph Search allows you to search Facebook for specific people, places, or content – for example, “friend of friends who live in New York and like sushi” or “restaurants liked by friends who also like Taco Bell” – using a brand-new interface. Here’s what that means – and how you can follow Mark Zuckerberg’s suggestion to so that your private information isn’t suddenly available to others.
Facebook emphasized that and does not expose any new information about users to anyone. However, controlling your personal data means controlling not only who can see your information but how it can be found and what can be done with it. And there is no question that Graph Search actually does open up a number of new ways that your buried content can be discovered and used, including not only content you made publicly available years ago but even photos you intentionally “hid” from your timeline.
Graph Search also potentially undermines the privacy protections in Facebook’s advertising model. Currently, advertisers on Facebook use a similar (but more limited) system to Graph Search to identify targets for ads – “users under 35 who live in Texas,” for example – and then send ads to those users. One of the key pieces of that system, however, was the fact that the advertisers never actually received a list of the users who fit that profile – Facebook brokered the exchange so that the ad was properly delivered without the identity of the recipient ever being exposed to the advertiser. Graph Search could potentially eliminate that privacy-friendly step, allowing advertisers and other companies to easily identify Facebook users whose publicly-available data fits a specific profile.
To his credit, Mark Zuckerberg did recognize that Graph Search can expose information that was previously buried, and actually encouraged users to Here’s how you can do just that:
Use Facebook’s “Privacy Shortcuts” menu (the lock icon in the upper right corner of the Facebook web page) to change the default privacy setting for your future posts.
Under the shortcuts, review your “activity log” to see what else you’ve posted or been tagged in that Graph Search users might be able to find. (Remember that changing your default setting only affects future content, not past content.)
You can also go directly to the page (under the gear in the upper right), where you can do either of the above or “limit the audience for posts you’ve shared with friend of friends or Public” to set all of your past content to friends only.
Postscript: our favorite part of the press conference? Mark Zuckerberg was asked about integrating Facebook’s data with more general web search, and said that he Here’s hoping that Facebook will show that same respect going forward.
(Crossposted on the ACLU of Northern California's )
Learn More About the Issues on This Page
-
Press ReleaseDec 2024
Privacy & Technology
ACLU Applauds Arizona Supreme Court Historic Decision That Police Need a Warrant to Access DNAACLU Applauds Arizona Supreme Court Historic Decision That Police Need a Warrant to Access DNA
PHOENIX — In a 7-0 decision, the Arizona Supreme Court ruled that a warrant is required to extract and analyze people’s DNA, saying that a person’s limited consent to a search of biological material for a specific purpose—in this case, a blood alcohol test for a DUI arrest—does not overcome that requirement. The ACLU and the ACLU of Arizona filed a friend-of-the-court brief in State v. Mitcham, arguing the government cannot genetically test biological material it already has in its possession—whether that’s blood taken from newborns to test for diseases or swabs collected from sexual assault survivors—to investigate the donors for a crime without first obtaining a warrant. In the decision, the court wrote that “in reaching this conclusion, we emphatically reject the State’s position that it was free to analyze Mitcham’s blood in any way it pleased simply because the State lawfully possessed the blood vials.” “Government analysis of our DNA can expose detailed information about our identity, appearance, family relationships, medical conditions, and more. We don’t consent to sharing all of that information each time we involuntarily shed our DNA or consent to a blood draw. The government’s argument in this case was a privacy nightmare,” said Vera Eidelman, staff attorney with the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project. “We are greatly heartened by the Arizona Supreme Court’s decision to preserve the privacy of our sensitive genetic information.” In 2015, during a DUI arrest, the defendant in this case consented to the government collecting a sample of his blood solely to test it for blood-alcohol content, and was advised that the sample would be destroyed after 90 days. Instead, law enforcement held on to this sample for three years, at which point it used it for a completely different purpose—to extract and analyze his DNA, without a warrant or consent—while investigating another crime. Had the court accepted the government’s rationale here, all of us who consent to a biological sample collection, at any point in time, for any purpose, to any government entity, could have been subject to a warrantless DNA search after the fact. “Our DNA can reveal so much about us that our genetic privacy must be protected,” said Jared Keenan, legal director of ACLU of Arizona. “The Court’s decision is vital to protecting the strong constitutional rights that keep all Arizonans’ information safe from warrantless searches and unconstitutional intrusion.” -
News & CommentaryDec 2024
Privacy & Technology
Face Recognition Threatens to Replace Tickets, ID at Sports Events – and BeyondFace Recognition Threatens to Replace Tickets, ID at Sports Events – and Beyond
You shouldn't participate in face recognition ticketing schemes. -
MississippiJul 2024
Free Speech
Privacy & Technology
NetChoice v. FitchNetChoice v. Fitch
Whether a law that mandates age verification for all users of social media services violates the First Amendment. -
News & CommentaryDec 2024
Privacy & Technology
AI Generated Police Reports Raise Concerns Around Transparency, BiasAI Generated Police Reports Raise Concerns Around Transparency, Bias
AI-generated police reports threaten to exacerbate existing problems in law enforcement, and to create new ones.