For the twin pillars of the web, Google and Facebook, it has been something of an annus horribilis when it comes to privacy.

Facebook’s attempts to make more and more of people’s profiles publicly available and Google’s seemingly laissez-faire attitude to data have made headlines across the world.

People hitherto gung-ho about their digital footprint, knowing little and caring less about the trail of information they leave, have been forced to think a little deeper about their online lives.

Facebook has made no secret of its desire to make the web more social but its increasingly complex privacy settings meant people were starting to give away more information than they wanted to more people than they intended.

“The environment of social networking is designed to encourage people to share. Often the default setting is privacy-unfriendly,” said Ian Brown of the Oxford Internet Institute.

Mark Zuckerberg wants a ‘social’ web

At the start of the year, Facebook’s privacy settings ran to more pages than the US constitution forcing founder Mark Zuckerberg to announce wide-ranging changes in May.

“Making the privacy controls on Facebook comprehensive and easy to understand is an important part of our commitment to giving every person the power to control their own Facebook experience,” the firm said at the time.

But not everyone is convinced it went far enough.

“The changes have made some aspects easier to control but more and more of people’s public profile is being made publicly accessible,” said Mr Brown.

Facebook is beginning to understand the importance of ring-fencing our net conversations, thinks Gus Hosein of Privacy International.

“It has realised that the internet isn’t just one big space where we are yelling at each other. With the introduction of Facebook groups there is now a way of ensuring that my mum doesn’t get all of my updates,” he said.

via BBC News – 2010, the year that privacy died?.

For the twin pillars of the web, Google and Facebook, it has been something of an annus horribilis when it comes to privacy.

Facebook’s attempts to make more and more of people’s profiles publicly available and Google’s seemingly laissez-faire attitude to data have made headlines across the world.

People hitherto gung-ho about their digital footprint, knowing little and caring less about the trail of information they leave, have been forced to think a little deeper about their online lives.

Facebook has made no secret of its desire to make the web more social but its increasingly complex privacy settings meant people were starting to give away more information than they wanted to more people than they intended.

“The environment of social networking is designed to encourage people to share. Often the default setting is privacy-unfriendly,” said Ian Brown of the Oxford Internet Institute.

Mark Zuckerberg wants a ‘social’ web

At the start of the year, Facebook’s privacy settings ran to more pages than the US constitution forcing founder Mark Zuckerberg to announce wide-ranging changes in May.

“Making the privacy controls on Facebook comprehensive and easy to understand is an important part of our commitment to giving every person the power to control their own Facebook experience,” the firm said at the time.

But not everyone is convinced it went far enough.

“The changes have made some aspects easier to control but more and more of people’s public profile is being made publicly accessible,” said Mr Brown.

Facebook is beginning to understand the importance of ring-fencing our net conversations, thinks Gus Hosein of Privacy International.

“It has realised that the internet isn’t just one big space where we are yelling at each other. With the introduction of Facebook groups there is now a way of ensuring that my mum doesn’t get all of my updates,” he said.

via BBC News – 2010, the year that privacy died?.