Invasion of Privacy.

by Awi Mayuga (fifth entry)

So Facebook changed its privacy settings, promising that they were better.

It's misleading.

I'm primarily on Facebook because I'm a gamer. I'm a sucker for those zynga applications -- never mind if the first few ones had all the same mindless-clicking gameplay. It's a treat to just click away and feel like you've accomplished something after having read through a few cases which leave you thinking, "There should be more to life than this." And because these games rely on networking to ensure that I don't get beaten up by somebody with a large mafia, clan or army, I'm "forced" to add people from seemingly every conceivable part of the world -- people who are as addicted to games as I am.


And so I have lists for all my Facebook friends (and I currently have a thousand... with still a few friend requests lying around in my request inbox). I've set it up to ensure that my gaming friends don't have access to my "personal" details. I even instructed my gaming applications to publish my game announcements only to my gaming friends, because many of my real-life friends won't even care that I'm panicking because I have only a few hours to kill my hydra, and the darn monster still has half of his energy left.

But I should have known better: Like social networks care about your privacy, right? But I'm not that bothered since I don't really have any vital information lying around on Facebook (or, for that matter, any internet site I'm a member of).

Except that I know for a fact that their previous privacy settings hide information about you better than they do so now. One change that really gets to me though is the "X is now friends with Y" update, which you can't toggle off now. Like my friends need to know that I became friends with "Steggo Sorrus", "Dream Bringer" and "Regiment Forth"!

Sigh. I can't help thinking of that saying: "Don't fix if it ain't broke."