Blogosaurus Lex

It was a Canadian decision, released by Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart in July 2009, that made Facebook change its privacy policy, but do Canadians know how – or even want – to keep their profiles private?

When Facebook’s privacy settings changed in December, users were given the option to keep their custom privacy settings or switch to the new defaults (check out Terms of Service Tracker for an excellent breakdown of the changes).  The new default settings, however, are not very secure. Users must customize various settings if they want their profiles to remain private. A recent article in the New York Times explains The 3 Facebook Settings Every User Should Check Now (h/t Slaw.ca).

That is, of course, only if you want to make your profile private. According to Mark Zuckerberg, one of the founders of Facebook, not everyone does. In an interview with TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington at the recent Crunchie Awards,  Zuckerberg claimed that social norms have changed and people are no longer as concerned with privacy as they once were.

Is this true? And if he feels this way, why has Zuckerberg made his own profile so secure? After the changes were made on December 9, Zuckerberg’s profile was briefly open to everyone. Whether this was on purpose or a result of a lack of understanding of the new default settings remains unclear. On December 11, he wrote on his fan page:

For those wondering, I set most of my content on my personal Facebook page to be open so people could see it. I set some of my content to be more private, but I didn’t see a need to limit visibility of pics with my friends, family or my teddy bear :)

Despite the lack of  “need to limit visibilty of pics”, Zuckerberg quickly changed his settings and his profile remains secure, with only his Wall and Info visible.

So does online privacy matter? Or is it true that are people are becoming less and less concerned? Some bloggers have claimed Zuckerberg is “more right than wrong”, while others have disagreed and raised questions about the motives behind the statements.

Some Facebook users do still care about privacy and were not impressed with the new defaults. On January 27, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner (OPC) launched a new investigation in to Facebook in response to a complaint filed by an individual who claimed “the new default settings would have made his information more readily available than the settings he had previously put in place.”

Facebook had agreed to implement changes to address the concerns raised in the July 2009 report. According to the statement released by the OPC, however

Since then…changes to the site’s privacy information, settings and tools have sparked criticism from users who feel that personal information posted to the site is, in some instances, even more exposed now than before.

Perhaps social norms have not changed as much as Zuckerberg thinks.

What about you? Are you on Facebook? (The LRC is.) How secure are your privacy settings? Did you accept the new default settings? Is it important to keep this information private, or is it unreasonable to expect privacy online?

For more discussion on online privacy, including the implications of reduced privacy, check out this video (transcript) of Cory Doctrow, an author, journalist and technology activist, speaking at the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom 2008 Conference.