Facebook Outing People

[ErieBear]

Did y'all see this article? Thought you might be interested...

 

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/when-the-most-personal-secrets-get-outed-on-facebook.html

[EXPAT]

I wouldn't say that Facebook outed them. I'd say that the two individuals didn't set up their privacy preferences properly which would have stopped this from happening. Everyone complains that the privacy settings are "so complicated" but I think people are just lazy. The settings are actually simple but complex only because there are so many them. All people have to do is take the time to fully understand what they are participating in.

[rvwnsd]

The chorus director outed these people. Facebook simply provided the means for him to do it. As a director of a group comprised of LGBT college students, Christopher Acosta should have known there was a high probability that some of his students were not out. There are plenty of people who are "loud and proud" in one setting and not in others. Although I agree that a group's privacy settings should not override an individual's settings, Mr Acosta bears the majority of the responsibility for this.

[operalover21]

The chorus director outed these people. Facebook simply provided the means for him to do it. As a director of a group comprised of LGBT college students, Christopher Acosta should have known there was a high probability that some of his students were not out. There are plenty of people who are "loud and proud" in one setting and not in others. Although I agree that a group's privacy settings should not override an individual's settings, Mr Acosta bears the majority of the responsibility for this.

 

I have to agree. File this under "what was he thinking?"

[wayout]

Here is something that happened to me relatively recently that really was unnerving. Even though I am "wayout" I am not "out" so I am always discrete and try to protect my privacy as much as possible. I do search some of the sites and of course look for guys to hire, mostly on Rentboy. So somehow I must have inadvertently "liked" the Rentboy site and it showed up on my timeline. I discovered it rather casually when going to facebook, something I don't always do that frequently. Thankfully I did that so I could get rid of it. I went back on Rentboy and saw that the "like" icon is very near the scroll bar so I probably mistakenly clicked on it and never realized it? That is the only thing I can think of. Anyway, it is so easy to out oneself these days it seems and I have no idea of my many friends on facebook who might have seen that. I'm a worrier so it has been kind of heavy on me thinking about it. I did go to my account settings after reading this post but not sure there is a way to set something up to deal with inadvertantly liking something as I did. Be careful out there in cyber world is my lesson.

[adriano46]

As much as one would be able (as Expat correctly states) protect one's anonymity, one of the problems with Facebook and other social media is that the rules change so often.

 

Since I joined FB some three years ago, I have had to monitor my privacy settings at least once every few months to ASSURE that my privacy is protected. Every now and then Facebook decides to re-invent the wheel and change what they do, and this causes a lot of confusion for a few weeks until you are able to readjust or reconfirm your settings.

 

Have others noticed that, if out of curiosity you check out the name of an escort or model, or even a famous actor, your own avatar and name appears on the screen in a box -- admittedly it SHOULD disappear if you do not ask to poke the guy or befriend, but still, it is abit scary that on Twitter, Facebook and other social media forums, every time I "look" I am also "seen"...

[operalover21]

Another reason why I don't do social media of any kind. Apart from in the inherent narcissim (which I find abhorent), it's just got ZERO privacy no matter what they claim.

[seeker630]

The chorus director outed these people. Facebook simply provided the means for him to do it. As a director of a group comprised of LGBT college students, Christopher Acosta should have known there was a high probability that some of his students were not out. There are plenty of people who are "loud and proud" in one setting and not in others. Although I agree that a group's privacy settings should not override an individual's settings, Mr Acosta bears the majority of the responsibility for this.

 

I agree!

 

(But I also find Facebook to be non-intuitive and not particularly user-friendly.)

[+ deej]

I wouldn't say that Facebook outed them.

 

I can agree with this.

 

I'd say that the two individuals didn't set up their privacy preferences properly which would have stopped this from happening. Everyone complains that the privacy settings are "so complicated" but I think people are just lazy. The settings are actually simple but complex only because there are so many them. All people have to do is take the time to fully understand what they are participating in.

 

But not this. Facebooik mismanagement bears part of the brunt.

 

Facebook often releases updates affecting their security settings without fanfare or notice, splaying parts of many profiles wide open where they were previously perhaps shaded if not outright hidden. If you spend every hour on FB you *MIGHT* notice that the way your profile appears TO OTHERS has changed, I suppose. Far more likely, you won't even know the change happened unless you read about it somewhere. It's a very juvenile way to handle software updates, but it's a very juvenile company.

 

I actually closed my Facebook account because I was going to Facebook more often to verify security settings than for actually using Facebook.

 

It isn't easy setting up Facebook security, much less keeping up with it.

[+ sam.fitzpatrick]

The chorus director outed these people. Facebook simply provided the means for him to do it. As a director of a group comprised of LGBT college students, Christopher Acosta should have known there was a high probability that some of his students were not out. There are plenty of people who are "loud and proud" in one setting and not in others. Although I agree that a group's privacy settings should not override an individual's settings, Mr Acosta bears the majority of the responsibility for this.

 

I serve on the board of directors for a non-profit agency. Although the agency has a Facebook account, our communications policy requires that anyone who is pictured or mentioned on the page must sign a release agreeing to be "published." While it is not foolproof, it does force the staff to ask if they intend to publish a photo and on a couple of occasions the individual has said "no."

[rvwnsd]

I serve on the board of directors for a non-profit agency. Although the agency has a Facebook account, our communications policy requires that anyone who is pictured or mentioned on the page must sign a release agreeing to be "published." While it is not foolproof, it does force the staff to ask if they intend to publish a photo and on a couple of occasions the individual has said "no."

 

That is a great policy. Kudos to that organization for doing its homework.

[EXPAT]

[/Quote]Facebook often releases updates affecting their security settings without fanfare or notice, splaying parts of many profiles wide open where they were previously perhaps shaded if not outright hidden. If you spend every hour on FB you *MIGHT* notice that the way your profile appears TO OTHERS has changed, I suppose. Far more likely, you won't even know the change happened unless you read about it somewhere. It's a very juvenile way to handle software updates, but it's a very juvenile company.

 

I actually closed my Facebook account because I was going to Facebook more often to verify security settings than for actually using Facebook.

 

It isn't easy setting up Facebook security, much less keeping up with it.

 

I don't believe this is true at all. If you have your security settings done correctly they have always ported to any changes they have made. I know people would love to badmouth Facebook and say otherwise, but I have been watching this closely and I have mine on pretty tight security and all settings have migrated properly whenever they make changes. The bigger issue is that most people that I've helped with their security settings have not taken the time to do them correctly to begin with. And in my opinion it's because they are generally lazy and want something stupidly easy. And this is not that difficult, it is just comprehensive and you need to pay attention to the details.