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Wong P



//Facebook's new Privacy Settings: revenue generator or privacy protector?//

Facebook is a ever growing new way to reunite and keep in contact with friends, family, co-workers, and sometimes even significant others. Facebook has boomed in the recent years to become the biggest social networking site in the world. There are currently over 400 million active users globally. Facebook was initially open for college students with a valid college e-mail address. It was just recently in 2006 that anyone that could validate that they are 13 and older with an e-mail address can become a Facebook user.

The new Facebook's privacy settings makes it possible for the user to block and share on a per post basis. So if your posting something that you just want your close friends and family to be the only ones to be able to see, this option is now available. But Facebook has made it clear that information on their page is publically available. It makes one weary about their 13 year old child's information is now publically available and there is not an option to decline the "sharing" of this information. //Seeing that the majority of Facebook users are between the age of 18-25, Gen-Y users might be a little slower to post that status or picture about "how wild that party got last night" because more and more employers are using and scanning Facebook on potential future employees.//

This video starts talking about Facebook's Privacy issues at 3:45. From 0:00-3:45 talks about employers able to read your text messages and e-mails, which is another blog post. media type="youtube" key="9wgAsFoYLys" height="303" width="510" align="center"

As a result of these new implemented privacy settings, numerous law-makers, privacy advocates, and some of the highest level technology CEO's have made it publically known that they have closed their Facebook accounts. Senator Charles Schumer of New York said "with great power comes great responsibility and sites like Facebook have great responsibility.... in my view, it ought to be the user who determines who get what information, not Facebook." With all this bad publicity about Facebooks new privacy settings from the "big-wig" CEO's of major technology companies, who knows what is in store for Facebook's future.