e-Safety implications of the new Facebook Timeline

[AngryTechnician]

Last week at their f8 conference, Facebook announced that your Facebook profile will soon be replaced with the new Facebook Timeline.

 

Now, I know everyone loves to hate Facebook but having enabled early access to it via the Developer program, I have to say I quite like it. And if I like it, so will the kids. It's scheduled to go live to the public from 29th September.

 

So, as well as us all having to modify our Facebook guides/slide decks with new screenshots AGAIN, I've been having a look over the changes that come with Timeline from an e-Safety perspective. My thoughts so far:

 

• In general, the new Timeline is designed to encourage users to add more information about their lives than before, including details about past events (you can now post photos and set a date in the past for when they appear, for example).
   
  
• It will launch alongside new apps to surface your activities on other sites (e.g. your listening history on Spotify). These existed before but there will be an increasing number of them. Anyone who has done the TUK training will be well aware of how powerful something like the knowledge of what music a teenager is into for someone trying to befriend them.
   
  
• Cover images (past and present) are set to Public visibility, and cannot be changed to any other setting by design.
   
  
• Places checkins are now collated into a single, easy-to-see-your-movement-patterns map. While there's no new data exposed, it wasn't as easy to see the whole picture before.
   
  
• Ditto for events you've attended that have public visibility.
   
  
• Your date of birth now appears as the first event on your timeline. It is set to Public access (seemingly ignoring the setting in the existing privacy setting), and cannot be restricted. This seems like an oversight to me but that's the way it is at the moment. Hopefully it will change before the public launch.
  

 

Where I've mentioned what is available publicly, this was evaluated by me using the 'View as Public' function provided by Facebook. I can only assume that this does in fact give a correct representation even though it is a simulated view.

 

More later as I find it...

Edited September 24, 2011 by AngryTechnician

[elsiegee40]

I can only groan... the settings are very mobile at the moment

[LosOjos]

I think they've finally taken it a step too far for me... fair enough, they don't exactly expose anything new here (apart from the D.O.B. privacy, which I hope is just an oversight) and it is very much down to how much the individual posts on their profile (I rarely post) but this timeline is going to make it stupidly easy for stalkerish behaviour to occur and potentially much worse...

 

That's it, time to finally disable my account.

 

By the way, has anybody ever "deleted" their facebook account? I did a couple of years ago, went through the whole process to permanently delete it (not just de-activate it). When I decided a few months ago to sign back up, all my data was still there as though I had never left.

[Theblacksheep]

I think they've finally taken it a step too far for me... fair enough, they don't exactly expose anything new here (apart from the D.O.B. privacy, which I hope is just an oversight) and it is very much down to how much the individual posts on their profile (I rarely post) but this timeline is going to make it stupidly easy for stalkerish behaviour to occur and potentially much worse...

 

That's it, time to finally disable my account.

 

By the way, has anybody ever "deleted" their facebook account? I did a couple of years ago, went through the whole process to permanently delete it (not just de-activate it). When I decided a few months ago to sign back up, all my data was still there as though I had never left.

 

You give them too much credit for hoping its an oversight.

[AngryTechnician]

I've noticed a few bugs get fixed over the weekend, but the birthdate issue isn't one of them. I've submitted a bug report to them this morning with a complete walkthrough video to reproduce, so hopefully it should get some attention.

[TechMonkey]

Same here, this could be the step that makes me delete my account.

[DrCheese]

You give them too much credit for hoping its an oversight.

ya, this is their usual "we'll release it and see if there's a backlash, if not it's staying" :/

 

As for the public cover image thing, I hate that. I hate that I'm forced to have my display picture a random cartoon character now as well, as it's now public regardless of my settings. I used to be able to hide it, except for friends. Only then was I comfortable having my real picture.

 

We had a staff member here impersonated from just their display picture before, so I'm paranoid about it.

[SmellyLlama]

I think they've finally taken it a step too far for me... fair enough, they don't exactly expose anything new here (apart from the D.O.B. privacy, which I hope is just an oversight) and it is very much down to how much the individual posts on their profile (I rarely post) but this timeline is going to make it stupidly easy for stalkerish behaviour to occur and potentially much worse...

 

That's it, time to finally disable my account.

 

By the way, has anybody ever "deleted" their facebook account? I did a couple of years ago, went through the whole process to permanently delete it (not just de-activate it). When I decided a few months ago to sign back up, all my data was still there as though I had never left.

 

Both myself and my partner have only logged into farcebook when absolutely necessary, yet again they seem to be pushing to far into the realms of personal space just a little too far. I read that even if you delete your account they still keep all your stuffs as it says in the eula when you sign up that anything on there is in fact thiers once you upload it. I may be wrong.

[LosOjos]

Both myself and my partner have only logged into farcebook when absolutely necessary, yet again they seem to be pushing to far into the realms of personal space just a little too far. I read that even if you delete your account they still keep all your stuffs as it says in the eula when you sign up that anything on there is in fact thiers once you upload it. I may be wrong.

 

I guess it is, I'm certainly a lot more careful these days about reading those things. As I said, "deleting" my account didn't delete a thing. The hoops they make you jump through to even de-activate your account now are ridiculous!

[SmellyLlama]

I guess it is, I'm certainly a lot more careful these days about reading those things. As I said, "deleting" my account didn't delete a thing. The hoops they make you jump through to even de-activate your account now are ridiculous!

 

We were both going to remove our accounts and just make a generic one for when we have to go on there. After we read the details it seemed pointless deleting them. I really liked it when it started, messages and pictures. Then they started piling on the rubbish. Now its just offensive.

[jumpinjamez]

Why do people complain? Facebook dont care, its not your site it belongs to Facebook and you choose to give them your data. They can and will do with it whatever they like .

 

Would love to see where Facebook is in 3 years time.

[LosOjos]

Why do people complain? Facebook dont care, its not your site it belongs to Facebook and you choose to give them your data. They can and will do with it whatever they like .

 

Would love to see where Facebook is in 3 years time.

 

People complain because Facebook keep moving the goal posts. If your mobile company called you and said "we own your phone number and we've decided we're going to publish it online for the world to see", I imagine you'd be a bit annoyed wouldn't you? Well that's what Facebook do, regularly. They give you privacy options, then they take them away or change them without notification and without justification.

 

Yes, they may own the data and I certainly agree you shouldn't post anything on there that you wouldn't be happy with the world knowing, but they lure people in with a false sense of security then change the game when they feel like it.

 

EDIT: I'd also like to add that I think it's hugely unethical to offer you the choice to delete your account when in actual fact they have no intention of doing so. Why lie to your client base?

Edited September 26, 2011 by LosOjos

[MbroTech]

They don't offer you the option to delete your account, merely disable it.

[LosOjos]

They don't offer you the option to delete your account, merely disable it.

 

They don't make it obvious or easy to find, but the option to delete your account is available (albeit useless): Deactivating, Deleting, and Memorializing Accounts - Facebook

[enjay]

Nice one, @AngryTechnician.

 

When you say cover images are public, does that mean that people can now see what photo albums I have published? Currently, only my friends can see them.

 

The links to Spotify etc are worrying if those are public.

 

The concerning thing here is how much of this stuff is now public. I accept the philosophy of "don't write it if I don't want it known", however I don't think that really covers it in full, as there are plenty of things I would happily share with friends and family, but don't want to share with the world - making everything I do public just means I won't use Facebook for socialising anymore and instead I'll just use it to play Bejeweled.

[Theblacksheep]

The links to Spotify etc are worrying if those are public.

 

Spotify now requires a ***book account. Goodbye spotify.

 

no ***book, no spotify

[elsiegee40]

The links with external websites are controlled (in theory) by the Instant Personalisation - Privacy Setting, so you should be able to knock this one on the head. (see page 6 of the guide in my signature below for how to get to it)

[AngryTechnician]

When you say cover images are public, does that mean that people can now see what photo albums I have published? Currently, only my friends can see them.

No, just the single photo you select as the cover image for your Timeline.

 

I don't use Spotify so can't comment on what the default visibility is for those.

[AngryTechnician]

OK, so something that passed me by until now (partly because I've been focusing on the timeline preview) is the new class of Apps that will be launching alongside it. Spotify is the one that everyone is talking about, but there will be others too.

 

These new apps work a lot like the old ones, but with an important difference - once authorised, they share your activity to the ticker and timeline without any further prompting. This won't just be apps you use on Facebook, or things like Spotofy where you sign in with your Facebook account, but also regular websites (The Guardian and digg are among the sites that will have this at launch). So everything you read on the Guardian goes straight to the ticker.

 

Now of course this will only start happening if you authorise it to, but you only have to do that once ever. I have a feeling we'll be seeing some interesting incidents cropping up soon of people forgetting that they did it, then stuff showing up in the ticker 2 months later that they didn't really want to share ("oh, so you're looking at an articles on the about CV writing, Bob? Looking to move on soon?". Techcrunch also points out that the explanation of exactly what you're authorising is literally small print:

 

http://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/wporeader.png?w=640

 

I think we all know how many people will just hit that blue button without really reading the message.

Edited September 26, 2011 by AngryTechnician

[elsiegee40]

I'm a bit bothered by the Mobile settings within account settings.

 

There are two check boxes: 'Share my phone number with my friends' and 'Allow friends to text me from Facebook' which are checked when you go into this screen.

 

You can uncheck them, but this isn't saved, so your mobile is shared whether you want it to be or not. Can someone else have a play and confirm this please?

[GrumbleDook]

From what I can see your mobile number is only published via the above if you register your mobile to receive texts, etc. If you don't have it registered then the number should not be available to others via that setting ... although it might be available via your contact details, etc.

[enjay]

No, just the single photo you select as the cover image for your Timeline.

Sorry, I knew that. What I meant was that the album name and cover image are now public, where previously only my friends could see them. This is still a safety risk - let's say I have an album of photos from a concert or football match I went to, or an event at my church, sports club etc and the album name says what they're from (as, let's face it, many album names do); seeing that album name would give people wanting to befriend me further information about me, along the lines of "hey, I see you support West Ham, too, let's go to their next game together" or "do you want to come round my house and listen to Chilli Peppers together?".

 

Along similar lines, if you add photos to a group page, does that also appear in your public timeline?

[elsiegee40]

From what I can see your mobile number is only published via the above if you register your mobile to receive texts, etc. If you don't have it registered then the number should not be available to others via that setting ... although it might be available via your contact details, etc.

 

If someone logs into your facebook account from an unrecognised devised, facebook can send you a text with a code that will enable the login. This is to help prevent account hacking.

 

If you have handed over your mobile number for that and then made your mobile number "only me", you did not not necessarily intend that all your facebook friends could see it.

 

The check boxes in the Account Settings imply that you can stop them. However, although you can uncheck the boxes, there is no save button, so as soon as you leave the screen facebook helpfully shares your mobile number again.

[AngryTechnician]

Sorry, I knew that. What I meant was that the album name and cover image are now public, where previously only my friends could see them.

None of my album names are visible except for the new album called "Cover Photos" that contains the single cover image for Timeline (later it will have more, unless I delete the old ones). All my other albums are completely invisible to public view.

 

As for group photos, they will appear in the timeline with the same visibility as the group. If the group is public, the photos are public; if the group is closed, only those in the group will see it on the timeline.

[AngryTechnician]

The check boxes in the Account Settings imply that you can stop them. However, although you can uncheck the boxes, there is no save button, so as soon as you leave the screen facebook helpfully shares your mobile number again.

Can you remove the phone, then untick the boxes when you add re-add it?