5 Facebook Privacy Blind Spots

Facebook no longer represents that it offers privacy as a matter of policy, like some other companies do. It states outright that it will use your data. It has a Data Use Policy instead of a Privacy Policy.

But consider the dictionary definition of privacy: 1) The state or condition of being free from being observed or disturbed by other people; 2) The state of being free from public attention. If that's your gold standard, then you cannot use Facebook or any other online service for that matter, at least not without privacy-protecting technology. Once you venture online, once you share, you're talking about something less than privacy. Online services may talk about how they respect privacy, but they should really be talking about data usage and sharing.

Facebook's privacy settings would be better referred to as sharing settings. That might encourage more people to use them. According to Consumer Reports, 13 million out of 150 million U.S. Facebook users don't use, or are not aware of, Facebook's privacy settings.

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