Over and over again, I find that people’s mental model of who can see what doesn’t match up with reality. People think “everyone” includes everyone who searches for them on Facebook. They never imagine that “everyone” includes every third party sucking up data for goddess only knows what purpose. They think that if they lock down everything in the settings that they see, that they’re completely locked down. They don’t get that their friends lists, interests, likes, primary photo, affiliations, and other content is publicly accessible.

apophenia » Blog Archive » Facebook and “radical transparency” (a rant)


Exactly. 


Speaking to my students about privacy and 6 degrees never seems to hit home.


I should do more demonstrations of how Facebook’s default privacy settings really does expose them in ways they don’t immediately realize.

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