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Facebook privacy is serious business

January 4th, 2012 3 comments

Another misguided “repost this as your status” public-service message is making the rounds on Facebook again. Several of my computer-illiterate friends are cluttering news feeds with:

Hello FRIENDS! As you all know I like to keep my FB private except to those I am friends with. So if you all would do the following, I’d appreciate it. With the new FB timeline on its way this week for EVERYONE. . . please do both of us a favor: Hover over my name above. In a few seconds you’ll see a box that says “Subscribed”. Hover over that, then go to “Comments and Likes” and unclick it. That will stop my posts and yours to me from showing up on the side bar for everyone to see, but most importantly it limits hackers from invading our profiles. If you repost this I will do the same for you. You’ll know I’ve acknowledged you, because if you tell me that you’ve done it, I’ll “like” it

The posts are often accompanied by comments expressing outrage at Facebook’s wanton disregard for personal privacy, naturally. The issue, of course, is that the message is full of inaccuracies, and following it won’t accomplish much of anything.

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Categories: General Idiocy Tags: ,